Time Marches On
by Namaste
Summary: House once said that change was one of life's greatest tragedies. His fellows -- the old team and the newbies -- are finding out just how hard change can be, and so is House. Casefic with multiple POVs.
1. Cameron

_Cameron _

The wind took Cameron by surprise, pushing against the door before she had it halfway open, nearly ripping the handle out from between her fingers, her gloves slipping on the cold aluminum. She grabbed tightly, pulled harder and the door inched open until she could slip inside.

The cold blew in with her. She felt it push past her legs. Two patients sitting in the waiting room glared up at her as the wind reached them. It had been getting colder all day, blasting apart what had been a mild February thaw with steady reminders that it was still winter. The skies were gray and had been spitting out a cold drizzling rain off and on since midnight.

"You didn't think it was going to last, did you?" Chase had asked that morning. He wasn't due in until the afternoon, but had gotten up sometime after she got in the shower and made coffee and poured her some juice.

They'd spent the night at her place, part of the system they'd worked out to stay at the apartment of whoever had the earliest shift. They'd agreed that it would be easier and faster for that person to get ready quickly if they were in their own space. It didn't seem to make much difference where she was these days, though. Things had migrated from Cameron's closets to Chase's, while Chase's shirts had taken over one of the drawers in her dresser.

It might make more sense to just give up on their separate lives and make it official, move in together, but Cameron hadn't asked yet if that was something Chase was ready for, maybe because she wasn't sure if she was.

"I was just hoping, it might be warm just for a few more days." Cameron had said that morning as she finished her juice, then ate some toast. She'd paused for a moment in front of the kitchen sink and listened to the rain beating against the glass before she reached for her coat. "It always seems so much harder going back to the cold."

"You can't change the weather," Chase had said. He'd sat at the kitchen table, his hair still disheveled from sleep. "Maybe if you're lucky, you'll be finished before the snow hits."

"Maybe."

Now Cameron took a long look into the ER waiting room as she passed on her way to the locker room. There were only a few people there, spread out on the vinyl chairs that lined the concrete walls.

The locker room was empty when she walked in. She took a pair of clean scrubs from the pile and put it on the bench next to her locker.

She took off her boots and exchanged them for the clogs she kept stored there. She stripped off her coat, then her blouse and dress slacks, changing into pale pink scrubs. When she first started in the ER she'd tried wearing her own clothes, even told one of the nurses that she'd thought it was important to look like a professional -- that it set patients at ease. The nurse had just laughed. By the end of her first week, Cameron understood why. She'd already ruined one vest and two pairs of slacks on combinations of vomit, feces and blood, and her feet ached from her dress shoes. When she slipped in a puddle of urine, she finally gave up.

She had a new life now, she'd told her self, so she might as well change her look. Dying her hair blonde had been her own private joke just to mark the occasion. She'd planned to let it drift back to her natural color, but never quite did.

Once she'd finished changing, she grabbed her lab coat, clipping her beeper onto one pocket and slipping her cell phone into the other. Then she checked the pockets for pens, her prescription pad, stethoscope and the other bits and pieces she'd carry around with her all day. The coat already felt heavy as it hung from her shoulders, becoming another reminder of how everything had changed. A few months ago, she had a locker up in the renovated rooms of PPTH's upper floors, a desk with a computer in the corner of the conference room that everyone had ceded to her. She'd kept nearly everything there that she'd need. Here, she had only a small locker in a cramped break room, and what she could carry in her pockets.

She glanced up at the clock. She still had a few minutes before her shift started. Cameron eyed the coffee pot, thought about pouring herself half of a cup, but didn't. She'd gotten spoiled by the brews they used to make upstairs, the way that Foreman seemed to know just how much of the grounds to put into each pot, the way they'd sit around the table, taking bets on when House would show up. Here, the coffee was either too strong, or too weak, and there was rarely any time to sit anywhere and swap stories.

She stopped, pushed the thoughts out of her mind. It didn't do any good to think about how things had been, Cameron reminded herself. She wasn't working upstairs anymore. She'd chosen to be here. She took a breath, and told herself again that she liked it here. She turned away from the coffee, checked her pockets again, walked to the door and walked out.

There were names written in color-coded ink at the nurse's station. Another white board -- just like upstairs -- but a very different set of information. She checked the colors and the shorthand code that told her what to expect: three patients waiting for an empty bed upstairs, two in queue for radiology, four waiting for final instructions for discharge, two beds empty, seven people in the waiting room. She grabbed the charts and started reading. Basic triage -- decide which patients needed to see a doctor quickly, which could wait, which should be quietly pointed toward the clinic for treatment of minor complaints.

She took in the information on each page, her eyes flitting from age to symptoms from temperature to pain levels and locations, each detail adding to the list of possible problems for each person.

"I don't have a specialty in emergency medicine," Cameron had told Cuddy when Cuddy first offered her the job. "It's not my area."

"If you can handle House, you can handle the ER," Cuddy had said. "You've seen more with him than you'll ever see there."

Cameron had studied the papers that Cuddy had given her. It would take her years to earn a senior attending post anywhere else. Just getting on staff somewhere might take her weeks -- even months. "I don't understand," she'd said. "Why ..."

"I'm trying to hold onto an outstanding doctor with years of high quality training and experience," Cuddy had said. "What's so hard to understand about that?"

Cameron hadn't given Cuddy an answer then, instead telling her she'd have to think about it. Her first reaction had been to turn her down, but she kept finding reasons why staying at Princeton-Plainsboro made sense.

"How many cases did we handle that started in the ER?" she'd asked Chase that night at dinner.

He'd looked up from his plate of pasta and salad, the dinner he'd made while she was still at work, but he didn't say anything.

"Maybe if there was someone with diagnostics training in the ER, we'd catch more cases earlier." She'd stabbed a tomato slice from her salad. "That makes sense, right?"

He'd stared at her for a moment. "You realize you wouldn't be working for House, right?" he'd finally asked.

"Of course," she'd said. "I'm just saying that I can use my diagnostics training in the ER just as well as I could in immunology."

Chase had finally nodded, looked down at his plate again and began twirling his fork in a mound of spaghetti. "Sure," he'd said. "That makes sense. Who knows, maybe someone who knows what House is looking for might be able to get him to take more cases." Then he'd stopped, and chuckled at his comment. "Or not," he'd added.

Cameron had sat back and studied Chase. It had been more than a week since House had fired him, nearly a week since she'd resigned. While she went in to the hospital every day to finish out the last days of her two-week notice, he'd been at home. She knew he'd been considering his next move, but he hadn't told her what it would be.

"Would it ..." she'd started, then took a breath. "Would it bother you if I took Cuddy up on her offer? I know you haven't had any offers yet."

"Yes I have," Chase had interrupted her. "Cuddy called the day after House fired me, gave me the same offer for the ER."

"What?" Cameron knew her voice had climbed half an octave. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't seem important. I turned her down."

Cameron hadn't said anything, but Chase had read the question on her face. He leaned across the table toward her.

"I've worked in the ER," he'd said. "It's not my style."

"How do you know?"

"I know," he'd said, "besides, I've been thinking of going after another specialty too."

Why, Cameron had almost asked, but then remembered that she'd be adding another specialty herself if she took Cuddy up on her offer. "Which one?" she'd asked instead.

Chase had paused again for a moment. She wondered sometimes since then if he'd even decided what it would be until that moment.

"How many times have we seen something in the OR that never showed up on a scan, that wasn't on an MRI or an X-Ray?" he'd asked. "Exploratory surgery is all about diagnostics, right?"

She'd nodded. Two days later, she'd signed Cuddy's contract, and Chase found himself a spot in the surgical residency program, with Cuddy smoothing his path.

And now here she was, in the ER with its concrete walls, and uncomfortable chairs and beds with thin mattresses. Nothing here was designed for long-term use. See the patients, diagnose them, send them on. Everything was about speed.

It hadn't been easy to make the transition. She'd told House that she was getting her "caring" out of her system, and it wasn't quite a lie. There was no time to get to know each patient personally. No discussions about parents or grandparents or loved ones beyond standard medical histories. No break-ins at their homes or offices. That was someone else's job now.

Cameron kept reading and told herself that she wasn't jealous of House's new team, or of Foreman who'd ended up back in the conference room with its white board and glass walls.

Thirty-two-year-old male, she read, high fever, abdominal pain, nausea. Appendicitis, she thought briefly, then read the name again. Charles Osbourne. It seemed familiar. She looked over the pages again, saw he'd been there just a little more than a week earlier. She walked over to the computer, logged in and pulled up his information.

She'd seen him then, but it was a case of fever, coughing with congestion and a sore throat. She'd diagnosed him with a bad case of the flu and sent him home. She'd told him to follow up with his own doctor if he didn't get better.

Now the fever was higher, and with abdominal pain and nausea. She wondered what she'd missed.

Cameron nodded to one of the nurses. "Let's get him back here," she said.

Osbourne was sitting on the bed when she got there, his wife standing next to him. Cameron remembered seeing her the last time too. She'd been anxious, worried, and he'd admitted quietly that he'd only come in to make her happy. She didn't look happy now.

"He's getting worse," she said, before Cameron could say anything.

Osbourne was hunched forward, sitting on the side of the bed, his legs dangling a few inches off the floor. "It's not that bad," he said, but his voice was weak and rough, betraying his words.

"We saw our doctor on Monday," the wife said. "He prescribed these." She handed over a bottle of erythromycin. Maybe a third of them were missing.

Cameron shook her head, but didn't say anything. Antibiotics wouldn't have done any good for a virus, but they were easy to prescribe, and made patients and their families feel better.

"He seemed to get better," the wife said. Cameron wished she'd looked up the wife's name in Osbourne's records. "Then this morning, he could barely get out of bed, and he started vomiting."

Osbourne shook his head. "I got sick last night," he said, then looked at his wife. "I didn't want you to worry. I thought it would go away."

Cameron held back a sigh, and tried to quiet the voice in her head that sounded like House and its comments about how patients were idiots. Instead, she smiled at the wife, and thought that she seemed to relax just a little. "Now that you're here, let's go ahead and take a closer look, see if we can clear things up."

The wife moved out of the way, and Cameron put her hands on either side of Osbourne's neck, feeling the heat from his fever, and swollen glands under his jaw. He looked pale -- just another nonspecific symptom, she thought, but opened his chart and marked it down.

"Let's get a new set of vitals, and let's get some blood for a Chem-20," Cameron told the nurse, who nodded, and walked around the bed to get the BP cuff. Cameron glanced at the "next of kin" name on the chart before she closed it. "Jennifer Osbourne," it read, "wife."

"I need you to lie down," Cameron said, and stepped back a little to give him room to move.

He didn't.

"Do I have to?" he asked.

"I need to check your abdomen so we can try to rule out appendicitis," Cameron said, then looked at him again, the way he was leaning forward. "Why don't you want to lie down?"

He still didn't move. "It ..." He looked at his wife, then down at the floor.

"What?"

Osbourne looked at Cameron. "It hurts more when I sit back," he said.

"Your stomach?" Cameron stepped closer to him.

"My chest," he said, then quietly added, "I've got the worst case of heartburn, and it's worse whenever I lay down." He shrugged slightly. "Crazy, huh? I've got heartburn when I can't keep anything down."

It wasn't crazy, Cameron thought. It was another symptom. But it didn't sound like heartburn. Or the flu. She took her stethoscope out of her pocket.

"Sit still," she said, and put the earpieces in her ears. She raised the stethoscope to his chest. "I just want to check something here."

"Pericardial effusion in a thirty-two-year-old male." Cameron didn't bother holding the chart out to House yet. She knew that wouldn't be enough, but knew she had to have an opening card to play.

She knew he'd been in the clinic, knew he'd head straight from there to his office, knew he'd be looking for an excuse to sit and read something. A new patient's file was as good as anything else. It was the best time to get his attention, if she could catch him before he made it to a TV.

House didn't even bother looking at her as he walked out of the elevator and turned toward his office. "So call cardiology."

House passed the hallway to Wilson's office.

"I would if it were just a heart condition," Cameron said. "We removed eighty milliliters of fluid from the pericardial sac, but his condition hasn't improved. There's also fever, nausea and tenderness in his lower right quadrant."

"Infection," House said. He slowed slightly as he passed the conference room. Two more steps and he pushed open the door to his office. Cameron followed him.

He walked through the room, past his lounge chair. He passed the TV without turning it on. He came to a stop on the far side of his desk, staring out the door at the gray sky. Cameron heard the whistle of the wind as it tried to force itself past the door and windows. It had gotten colder, the rain changing to snow -- tiny flakes battering themselves against the glass.

Cameron could see House reflected in the glass, but it wasn't dark enough outside to see details, to make out the expression on his face. "The white count is normal," she said, "and he's already on antibiotics."

House turned to look back at her, his head slightly cocked to one side. Cameron tried to hold back her smile. She'd missed this moment -- that split second when she'd see that she'd gotten his attention, when she could sense his mind coming alive to every possibility, see the light in his eyes change from some faint reflection dimmed by drugs and pain to become something brighter, something that flickered and became stronger with each new clue, something that she'd only sense for a half of a breath before he'd turn away and hide it again.

She held out the file.

He took it, then sat. He slouched back in his chair and swung his left leg onto the corner of the desk, then lifted the right on top of it, crossed at the ankles. He opened the file.

Cameron looked at his feet. "You're wearing boots," she said.

House nodded. "Yes."

"You never wear boots."

He looked at her over the top of the file, then at his own feet. "Apparently, I do." He flipped over a page in the file, kept reading.

Cameron shook her head. "You always wear sneakers," she said.

"Apparently I don't," House said, "and he's only had garden variety antibiotics." He closed the file, held it in the air between them, not extending it toward her, but not ready to keep it for himself yet. "And your blood tests are useless. The really cool stuff always hides from blood work." He shook the file at her. "He just needs something targeted to the infection."

Cameron ignored the file, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Sure," she said, "but then first someone would have to find what kind of really cool infection it is in the first place."

"And I suppose you want me to do your dirty work." House lowered the file slightly.

Cameron didn't say anything, waited for House to make his move. House looked away, staring at something off in the corner of the room, at something only he could see.  
Finally he looked at her again and nodded. "Fine," he said.

He swung his legs off the desk and stood. She stepped back to give him room and watched as he walked into the conference room. "New case," she heard him say, then the door closed behind him. She saw him toss the file onto the table and Taub reached for it, opened it. Kutner got up and stood behind him to read over his shoulder.

House kept walking over to the white board and picked up a marker.

Cameron wanted to follow him, to tell them what she knew, what she suspected, but that wasn't her job anymore, she reminded herself. That wasn't her place. It wasn't where she belonged. Not anymore.

Her pager went off and she looked at it, recognizing the extension for the emergency room. She took one last look through the glass, then walked away.


	2. Taub

_Taub_

"It's an infection." Foreman read the white board and shook his head. His voice had that same tone of frustration that Taub had heard from the first day Foreman had shown up at the back of the lecture hall.

House kept writing, his back to Foreman. He added "diff. breathing" under "fever." "That's not what the blood work says," he said.

Taub had heard from friends back in New York that Foreman had made the rounds there during the summer, after Mercy fired him. He wondered why Foreman hadn't just taken a different tack. There were plenty of other positions he could have had with his experience in neurology and diagnostics, other than running his own team somewhere else. He could have signed on as an attending almost anywhere and work his way up, if he'd just been patient. There was no reason why he had to come back here.

"That just means it didn't turn up on the tests the ER ran," Foreman argued. It seemed like he was always arguing about something. "It doesn't mean that it's not an infection."

Of course, Taub thought to himself, Foreman was just stubborn enough not to follow any possibility except the one he already had set for himself.

"And that's why we're going to run another set of labs -- blood, urine, pericardial fluid and whatever else we can find. And add a spinal tap while we're at it." House turned to the table, the marker still in his hand. "What else?"

"Could be autoimmune," Thirteen said. "His body is screwed up and attacking it's own organs."

"Post-MI syndrome," Kutner said.

"Dressler's?" Foreman asked. "You really think he had a heart attack and didn't realize it?"

Kutner shrugged. "He had so much extra fluid in his pericardium it was affecting his heart, but he wrote it off as heartburn. It's not that hard to think that he ignored a mild heart attack a few weeks ago as a bad burrito."

House added "post-MI" and "autoimmune" to the white board on the side for diagnosis, next to "infection." "Anything else?" he asked.

Taub looked at the board again. He'd spent years talking about operations, about new techniques, honing his skills with a scalpel and stitches. He'd been good at that, at running meetings, at talking to patients. He'd built a good reputation ... as a surgeon anyway. He'd been admired, and was happy within his own comfort zone.

Here he sometimes felt like he was a half-step behind everyone else, still learning how to play House's version of diagnostics hardball while everyone else was swinging for the fences. He heard the wind whistle past the windows, thought about how he always seemed to be running against the wind, while the others coasted along with it at their backs.

Taub turned away from the windows, away from distractions of the way things used to be. He looked at the chart again, let his mind make new connections between the patient, his symptoms and what they could mean. "Cancer."

House turned at looked at Taub for a moment, balanced with his weight on his left leg, the pose that Taub had come to recognize was comfortable for him. He fiddled with the marker between his fingers. "Most likely place for cancer to turn up that would affect the heart would be in the lungs," House said. "Look at the film. The lungs are clean."

"That's the most likely place, but not the only place," Taub said. "Could be lymphoma or leukemia."

House didn't say anything, just stood there. Taub wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but guessed that it was good. He was pretty sure that if he hadn't liked the idea, House would have just called him an idiot and moved on. Finally House nodded, turned to the board and added "cancer" to the list of possible diagnoses.

House stared at the board, his back to the room with nothing Taub could see except the dark gray of House's suit jacket, no way to tell what was going through his mind. Finally he capped the marker. He unhooked his cane from the board and stepped away. "Of course," he said, and sat on the edge of the table, "first we have to make sure he lives long enough to diagnose." He nodded at Thirteen. "You and Taub repeat the echocardiogram, get a look at what's going on in the pericardium now."

"Why not do an MRI?" Kutner asked.

"Echo's faster," House said. "If he looks good enough on the echo, we can wait and see if he gets worse. If not, get him to the MRI and prep him to drain more fluid."

"We should start him on some IV antibiotics," Foreman said. "If he responds, we'll know it's an infection, and we might not have to drain anything."

"But what flavor?" House asked. "We could go broad spectrum, but chances are that won't do any good unless we can narrow down the type of infection we're looking at."

"But it wouldn't hurt," Foreman said.

House stared down at the carpet, cocked his head slightly to the side, as if he could see something there that no one else could. "Fine," he said, and looked up at Foreman. "Start him on cefatoxime, but then run some more blood tests and do a spinal tap so you can find this infection of yours."

He pointed his cane toward Kutner. "And you," he said, "get a better history. See whether he's had any other cases of heartburn lately. If he says he hasn't, go to his house, see if he's stashed any over-the-counter heartburn meds anywhere."

Kutner took the file and was out the door before Taub was even up.

"I'll get a new set of blood samples while you two get everything ready for the echo, then do the spinal tap once you're done," Foreman said. He took off his suit coat and hung it on the back of his chair, then grabbed his lab coat from a hook near the door.

Taub wondered why Foreman bothered with the suit. Taub left his suit coat in his locker every morning, exchanging it for the lab coat. That white piece of cotton meant something. It meant he was a doctor, someone to trust. Foreman only wore the lab coat when he needed to, instead preferring his high end suit. Maybe he thought that meant he was someone else, someone in charge, but he didn't fool anyone. Wearing the right clothes -- dressing the part -- didn't mean that he was in control. But then maybe he wasn't trying to look like he was in charge of House. Maybe he was just using the suit to try and draw a line between himself and Taub, Kutner and Thirteen.

It didn't make any difference what he wore, though. He still had to answer to House the same as everyone else.

Thirteen held the door open behind her and waited as Taub caught up. Foreman was already at the elevator and hit the button for the third floor. Once the doors opened again, he headed for the patient's room at the end of the hall. Taub turned right and walked past the nurse's station toward the portable ultrasound cart in the storage room just behind it. Thirteen took the container with the gels and wipes.

At any other hospital, they would have just ordered the test, then waited for the radiologist's report. They all would have sat back and waited -- maybe done some more research or seen more patients. A year ago, and Taub would have done the same thing, would have thought that was the best way to do things. Now ... He ignored the thought and pulled the cart out from its niche against the wall, out into the open space of the storage room. Now he wasn't so sure that the normal way to do things made as much sense anymore.

House doesn't work like that, and now, neither does Taub. Nothing's normal any more, at least not what he'd come to think of as normal. Normal ended sometime after the day Amy walked into his office and introduced herself as the temp his partners had hired while he was on vacation with his wife.

Normal ended sometime after she laughed at his joke, when no one else did. Normal ended sometime after she'd reached across the table at the office holiday party, and wiped a stray bit of whipped cream from his chin.

Normal ended sometime after his wife told him she was going to Vermont with her friends for a women's skiing retreat.

Normal ended when Amy smiled, and asked him what he'd do by himself while his wife was gone.

Normal ended when Amy let something they'd done together slide to one of the other nurses -- who just happened to be the last one-night stand.

Normal ended when that nurse whispered something to someone else, then to someone else.

Taub pulled the cart out of the nurses' station, then turned to push it ahead of him down the hallway. One of the wheels wobbled, and he put extra pressure on the left side of the cart to keep it moving straight ahead.

He followed Thirteen down the hall, wondering what normal had been like for her -- before. And what normal would be like some day. He wondered if he'd even recognize normal when he saw it.

He still missed what he'd had, mourned the life that was dead -- the life he'd killed. Some mornings when the alarm went off, he'd lay there in bed, knowing he had to get up, start the long commute to Princeton. Back in New York, he'd been the one in charge, the one everyone came to for advice. He'd take young surgeons under his wing, show them some of his tricks, smile at every compliment.

He had power then. Prestige. A partnership. Everyone loved him. Now? Now he'd see the looks the nurses gave him when he passed by, heard their comments about House, and -- by extension -- about him.

"I don't trust House," one of them had told him during his first week at PPTH, "so I don't trust you."

He knew he should stop thinking of what had happened back then. Of what he'd lost. What was important was what he still had. His wife still loved him, despite it all. He still had money, at least he had enough banked away to continue living well even with the small salary he earned as one of House's fellows.

And the crazy thing was, he was actually enjoying himself. It wasn't the life he'd chosen. Staying in plastic surgery would have been easier, but he didn't have that anymore. What he had, was this -- a life where nothing was ever normal, at least not for long.

He slowed down when he came near the patient's room and let Thirteen open the door for them. He pushed the cart through. Foreman was filling a vial with blood.

"Almost done," he told them. He didn't bother to look up.

"Hi." Thirteen put the supplies down on a table. "I'm Dr. Hadley, this is Dr. Taub." She nodded back toward him.

The patient, Osbourne, just nodded to them. His wife shook Thirteen's hand. "Hi," she said.

Jennifer Osbourne's hair had been dyed a light blonde, Taub noticed. It didn't quite match the shade of her eyebrows. She had some minor scarring on her face, probably from acne as a teenager. If she'd been a patient of his, a year ago, he would have expected her to be asking for breast augmentation. But she wasn't his patient, and this wasn't a year ago. He shook his head. Another change he'd have to make. Different patients, different concerns.

Taub turned to Charles Osbourne in the bed. He was a few pounds overweight, according to his chart, but fit. Taub could see the muscles flex in his forearm as Foreman drew out the syringe, covered the spot with a cotton ball and bent his elbow in.

"Did Dr. Foreman tell you what we're going to be doing?"

"He said you needed to do some more tests, to check his heart again," Jennifer Osbourne said.

Foreman looked over at them. "I'll be in the lab," he said, and left. Taub moved around to the side of the bed where Foreman had been and moved the cart into place.

"Is this going to take long?" Osbourne asked.

"Not too long," Taub said. "We're going to use the ultrasound to get a picture of your heart. That'll help us find out how your heart's doing, and if we'll need to drain some fluid."

"They already did that in the emergency room," Jennifer Osbourne said.

"I know," Thirteen said. She stepped in next to Taub. She gave a slight smile which seemed to reassure the wife. People who didn't know her -- patients , family -- seemed to trust Thirteen, to think that her downplayed emotions were a sign of confidence, rather than Thirteen's refusal to show what she was thinking about anything.

"We just want to make sure everything still looks good," Thirteen said.

"Why wouldn't it?" the wife asked.

Taub looked over at Thirteen, let her answer the question.

"We still have to find out what caused his problems in the first place," she said. "Since we haven't done that, the fluid could return." She paused for a moment. "We may have to drain it again."

Jennifer Osbourne took her husband's hand. He turned his palm to meet hers and their fingers intertwined. He smiled at her. "Don't worry," he told her. "I'll be fine." She smiled back.

"I know," she said.

Taub looked at them, then picked up the probe. He squirted the gel over the surface while Thirteen opened Osbourne's gown. "Let's get started," Taub said.

"We've got too much fluid in the pericardium again," Taub told House.

"It's only been three hours," House said. "How much?" He looked up from the far side of the table, where he was setting up the tripod frame for the white board in the open spot on the floor just in front of the sink.

Wilson was sitting at the head of the table, a red mug in front of him, and a folded newspaper held in his hand. He didn't say anything, but kept glancing from an article over to House and back.

"Enough that we've cleared time to drain it again this afternoon," Taub said. He watched as House stepped away, looked at the room, then shifted the frame a little closer to the table. Wilson looked back down at his paper, unfolded it and turned a page. Taub heard the door opening behind him and he looked over to see Foreman coming into the room.

"Thirteen's clearing us some time in the MRI so we can take a closer look at the heart for any other problems," Taub said. Foreman didn't say anything. He watched House for a moment, then looked at Wilson and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Wilson shrugged and took a drink.

Taub still hadn't figured out Wilson. He didn't work for House, but they seemed to be a package deal. He looked like the kind of doctor everyone admired, the guy everyone liked. The nurses liked him, his doctors liked him, even his patients liked him.

It didn't make any sense that he'd spend so much time with someone like House.

The wind blew past the windows again. Taub heard the rough growl of snowplow scraping along the pavement somewhere outside the building. It'd be a bitch getting home tonight -- if he made it home at all. Naomi had asked if he wanted to move, but he didn't want to commit until he had the job. Now that he had the job, he didn't want to give up on the last pieces of the life he'd had before, the apartment that he'd bought after he'd been made a partner, the neighborhood that Naomi liked so well.

He heard snow pellets rattle against the glass, and wondered if he should just reserve a hotel room for the night.

Taub finally looked away from the window, and saw House staring at the glass, shifting his weight slightly onto his cane. Taub saw Wilson put down his paper. He was watching House, and Taub followed his gaze to try and see what he saw, but saw only the set of House's shoulders, the way he stood like he always did. House turned from the window, and Wilson managed to turn away before House saw him. Instead House caught Taub studying him. He stepped away and pointed at the white board, lying face down on the table.

"Grab that," he said.

Taub picked it up. It was heavier than he'd expected. He wondered how hard it had been for House to take the few steps with it over to the table.

"Put it there." House nodded at the frame and Taub put it in place. The letters were slightly smudged and Taub looked down and saw where the ink had rubbed off on the white cloth of his lab coat and dress shirt.

He looked at House. "Why are you moving it?" he asked.

House groaned a little and rolled his eyes as he turned to Taub. Dumb question, Taub told himself. "I wanted to," House said. "I'm trying something new." His voice was harsh, taunting. Definitely a stupid question, Taub told himself.

"White count is elevated," Foreman finally announced. Maybe that's what really separated Foreman from him and Thirteen and Kutner. Foreman knew not to ask stupid questions.

"Not that elevated, or you would have been shouting about it as soon as you walked in," House said.

Foreman sighed. "It's a little under 12,000."

"So, not enough to actually tell us anything," House said.

"Sed rate is higher than normal," Foreman added.

"Which only means something's inflamed. The effusion already told us that." House looked at the white board and took another step back.

"Where's Kutner?" Foreman asked.

"Checking the guy's work site," House said.

"Not the house?"

"He already did the house," House said, turning to Foreman. "I figured as long as he's out, he might as well be thorough."

Foreman shook his head, and walked over to the spot where the white board used to be, looking from there to the new location. "You planning to leave that there?" he asked.

"Why not?" House asked.

"Because you're blocking the coffee." Foreman nodded toward the coffee maker on the counter behind the board.

Wilson looked over the top of his newspaper. "He's got a point," he said.

House walked around to the side of the board, looked at it from another angle. He stepped back to the front and pulled at the frame, yanking it forward six inches. Taub reached out to steady the board as it shuddered and slid until House got it to the spot he wanted.

House stepped back to the side of the board. "That works," he said.

"Yeah," Foreman said, and shook his head. "That's much better."

House leaned onto his cane, his right leg bent slightly under him. "You do the lumbar puncture yet?"

"Not yet, I was waiting for them to finish the echo."

"We're done," Taub said.

"So," House turned to Foreman, "why are you waiting now?"

Foreman put up both hands, then turned and walked out.

House looked at the board again. Taub pulled out a chair and sat. "And why are you still here?" House asked.

"I'm ... waiting for Thirteen to page me that she's cleared us some time in the MRI," he said.

"And it would take even less time if you were both working on getting some MRI time," House said. "That would be good for the patient, right?"

Taub stood again. "Right," he said. "I'll just go help her out."

"Good idea."

Taub walked across the room and out the door. Through the glass he could see House take a seat. He was still staring at the board as Taub walked out of sight.


	3. Thirteen

_Thirteen_

Hadley stood in the hall, watching the patient and his wife through the glass. She'd seen Foreman leave ten minutes ago. Now the patient was still lying on his side, his back to the glass walls. His wife had pulled one of the chairs up next to the bed and was sitting there leaning toward him, her elbows on the edge of the bed. Hadley couldn't see the wife's hands, but imagined them holding her husband's larger hands, comforting him -- or maybe allowing him to comfort her.

"We've got the MRI in fifteen minutes." Hadley hadn't heard Taub until he spoke and she glanced over at him. He had an ability to move quietly in and out of patient rooms, to draw no attention to himself until he was needed. During exams and procedures he moved with small, quiet and precise actions. She wondered if he'd learned how to do that during his days in plastic surgery, or if he'd been drawn to reconstructive surgery because of his ability to hide where he'd been.

Maybe it was both.

"We should get him down there," Taub said.

"I was giving them a minute," Hadley said, and looked back into the room.

Taub nodded. He leaned back against the wall, but Hadley could sense him watching her, rather than the patient. "Something you need?" she finally asked.

"Just thinking," he said.

"About what?"

"I'm trying to imagine what it's like to be in there," he said. "The guy wakes up this morning at home, thinking he's got a touch of the flu. Now, he's in the ICU. Tomorrow?" He shrugged, and didn't bother answering his own question.

He was quiet for a few seconds, then Hadley heard him shift his position. She turned to face him, but he had turned away, was staring across the hall at Osbourne and his wife. "Most of us know that things could change, anytime. You get in a car accident, you lose your job, but most people never realize how suddenly things can change -- in a week, in a day, in a few hours." He turned back to Hadley. "You ever wonder what it's like? Knowing that your life could go from something completely normal to a death sentence in just a few hours?"

Hadley looked at him. "House told you."

"Told me what?" Taub looked confused.

Hadley took a step toward him, wondering if he was lying. In the weeks since she'd told House about her mother, he'd dropped hints, even called her "Huntington's," though later claimed it meant nothing. Only Kutner had followed up on it, and only once. She kept expecting House to say more. Maybe he'd take someone aside, someone like Taub. Tell him that he should monitor her for signs, just in case.

But if he had, no one had said anything about it to her yet. Of course it would be just like House to tell them to keep it a secret, to not let her know, then amuse himself of her expense, watching to how see each person reacted, waiting to see how long it took her to find out. Nobody had come to her and confessed anything, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they knew. That each time one of them stared at her, they were judging every movement, every action.

"Told me what?" Taub repeated.

Hadley shook her head. Taub wasn't that good of an actor. If he were, he'd still be in New York, still doing surgery on the rich and famous. "Nothing," she said.

House hadn't had any problems announcing Taub's secrets to everyone. Kutner hadn't been spared either. It didn't make sense that he was keeping her secret to himself. Of course, there was a good chance he was just waiting for the most dramatic moment to reveal it. There was no way she could know when that would be.

She stepped away from Taub again. "I'll get him ready," she said, and nodded toward Osbourne's room.

"I'll meet you down there," Taub said.

She watched as he walked away, then took a deep breath. She crossed the hall, slid open the door and stepped inside.

Jennifer Osbourne looked up. Hadley recognized the look on her face, a mixture of fear and confusion. The longer it took to diagnose her husband, the more that expression would change, combining with exhaustion and frustration as each hour clicked by.

"I just need to borrow your husband for a while," Hadley said. She gave the wife a smile, but she didn't look reassured. Hadley wondered if she suspected just how bad things could be. How much worse they could get. Probably not. It was easy for families to fool themselves into believing the best, convincing themselves that they were the exception.

Osbourne pushed himself up on one elbow, and fumbled a bit with the EKG leads.

"You don't have to get up," Hadley said, and put a hand on his shoulder. She nodded over at the door as an orderly walked through pushing a gurney.

"I can walk," Osbourne said. He rubbed his forehead and watched as the orderly came around to the side of the bed.

Hadley smiled. "I'm sure you can, but you'll feel better if you don't." She leaned down toward him, talking softly. "And your headache will only get worse if you move around."

He grinned slightly, then lay back. Hadley helped him slide over to the gurney, untangling the wires and waited as the orderly covered him with a blanket. She watched the gurney roll out the door, then stepped next to the wife, touching her arm, holding her back from following them.

"This is going to take about an hour," she said. "You should take a break. Get something to eat."

Jennifer Osbourne shook her head. "I'm not hungry," she said, "and I'd rather be with him."

"I know," Hadley said. It wasn't a lie. "But you won't be allowed in the room during the tests." She gave the wife a moment to accept that information. "You've had a long day already, and it's not over yet," she continued. "You should take the chance while you've got it."

The wife finally nodded, and Hadley stepped away, following the gurney's path down the hallway. When she looked back, Jennifer was standing just outside the room, watching them. She turned to wipe away a tear. Probably she hadn't wanted her husband to see. Hadley remembered what that was like, not admitting to your own emotions because you had to be strong for someone else -- for your mother, for your husband, for your wife -- until the mask was second nature, and you never let anyone see the truth.

Hadley caught up with the gurney in the hallway, then walked alongside it to the elevator.

"How did you know I had a headache?" Osbourne asked.

"It's a common side effect," she said.

"Of the tests? Or just from being here?"

She looked over at him, seeing the smile on his face from the small joke, knowing that he was just trying to settle his own nerves. "A little of both," she said.

The elevator door opened and she helped push it over the threshold and inside, waited until the orderly pushed the button for the basement radiology area. "You should tell us when you something feels wrong, even if you think it doesn't matter."

"I didn't want to complain," Osbourne said. He was watching the numbers change as the elevator descended. "Between the guys on the work sites bitching and the sounds of the power tools I get headaches sometimes. And there are always the usual aches and pains, you know. I didn't think it was a big deal."

"I understand," Hadley said, "but it could be a new symptom. We need to know what's going on."

"Sorry," he said, "I guess I'm not used to being a patient." He closed his eyes for a moment, then glanced over at her before he stared back up at the numbers. "I'm usually the one taking care of everyone," he said.

Hadley remembered seeing her mother when she was first diagnosed, watching the way she fought the transition from caretaker to patient. "It's not always easy," she said. "Maybe we'll be lucky, and you won't be a patient for long, Mr. Osbourne."

"Ozzy," he said. "Call me Ozzy."

"Ozzy," she said.

The elevator doors opened and the orderly pushed. Hadley guided the gurney left, toward the MRI rooms, then walked ahead to push open the doors.

She turned back to look at Osbourne. He was staring at the MRI machine that dominated the center of the room, then looked over at the monitors along the walls.

"First job I ever got, I was seventeen years old," he said, his voice quiet, almost distant. Hadley guessed that he wanted to distract himself by talking about something normal, about work. About his life. "I walked onto the job site and the foreman complained that he had two guys named Chuck already working for him. He said he was going to call me Ozzy, and I've been Ozzy ever since."

The gurney came to a stop next to the MRI table. Taub was waiting for them and helped to adjust the IV and EKG leads.

Osbourne watched them, but kept his mind in the past, back when things were still normal. "My wife didn't know my real first name until we'd had three dates," he said. "My parents are the only ones who call me Chuck anymore."

"We're going to need you to scoot over," Taub told him, and he did. The orderly pushed the gurney away from the MRI, then out the door. "You'll need to lie completely still," Taub explained. "It's going to be loud, but if you need anything, just speak up. We'll be able to hear you."

Osbourne nodded, but his eyes darted from one piece of equipment to another. She wondered if he was still thinking he'd find something comforting. Something familiar.

Hadley slid the O2 sat monitor onto his finger, then looked up to see him watching her. She leaned down and smiled. "They call me Thirteen," she whispered.

He looked up from the monitor to focus on her. He managed a slight smile. "Now that's a crazy name," he said.

Hadley nodded, adjusted the blanket and stepped back.

"If they call you Thirteen, Dr. Hadley, what do you call yourself?"

Hadley stopped for a moment, considered the question. A few months ago, the answer would have been easy. Now it wasn't. "It depends," she said, "on what I'm thinking about."

Osbourne grinned and Thirteen hit the button to slide the table into the MRI. "If you need anything, just let us know," she said.

Thirteen stopped outside the conference room door, staring through the glass. Taub came to a stop just behind her.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She stepped aside and let him peer through the glass with her.

There were books on the table, books on the chairs. Three different stacks of books were piled against the glass wall between the conference room and House's office.

She saw Kutner walk out from the back of the room, zigzagging past the lone desk and the white board. He had six textbooks balanced one on top of the other, held in a tight stack between his hands. He stopped when he saw them, his eyebrows raised briefly and the expression on his face making it clear that he had no answers for them. He walked on, and found a place for the books on the floor between the table leg and one of the chairs.

Thirteen pushed the door open. "What's going on?"

Kutner let go of the books, the top two sliding off the pile and he scrambled to pick them up. He didn't say anything, just nodded toward the back of the room.

"You two should have finished the MRI fifteen minutes ago." House stepped out from the between the book shelves, carrying a book in his left hand. He tossed it to Kutner, who found a place for it on the top of the table. He pointed his cane at Taub. "Should I be creating some mental scenario of you getting it on with every woman in the hospital? If so, I should warn you that the lock on the janitor's closet doesn't work."

House took two steps toward them, his hand held out, his fingers motioning for the envelope in Taub's hand.

"We were waiting for the films," Taub said, and handed over the envelope. "We figured you'd want to see them for yourself."

House carried them into his office and turned on the light board, slapping them into place. "Nasty," he said. He stepped closer. Thirteen knew what he'd see: no sign of injury, no malformation of the heart itself, just the enlarged pericardium. She heard the door open behind her and looked over to see Foreman walk in. His hands were empty, so he probably didn't have anything new to show. No answers. He stood behind Taub, looking at the film over his shoulder.

"Nothing to indicate post-MI," Taub noted.

Kutner didn't seem surprised. "I already checked the blood work for any unusual cardiac enzymes. Nothing. None of his guys could remember him being sick in the last two months, other than his ER visit here a week ago and both his house and the work site were clear."

House seemed to be ignoring Kutner. He must have already heard his report earlier. Instead he kept staring at the film. Thirteen was sure that there was nothing to see beyond the buildup of fluid, but still wouldn't have been surprised to hear House point something out that they'd all missed.

She heard the wind whistle past the windows and looked away from House, out toward the windows where she could see snow falling thick through the air. "I'm surprised anyone's working outside today," she said.

"They weren't," Kutner said, "not really. Mostly they were hanging out in the trailer, waiting to see if the bosses would send them home."

"What kind of a trailer?" Taub asked.

"I don't know," Kutner said, "a little one?"

Taub turned to House. "There have been cases down in New Orleans and Mississippi where people have gotten sick from the formaldehyde leeching out from their FEMA trailers."

House cocked his head slightly, but didn't say anything.

"He still could have gotten enough exposure to increase his cancer risk," Taub said. "Add that to any of the other environment factors ..."

"There were a bunch of cigarette butts in the trailer," Kutner noted. "Ozzy doesn't smoke, but that raises his exposure to second hand smoke. Enough exposure in the trailer, enough exposure to the cigarettes ..."

Thirteen smiled a little hearing Kutner use the nickname. She shouldn't have been surprised. People liked Kutner. Hell, she liked Kutner, at least a little. She glanced over at him, saw the way his face lit up with the possibility that he'd found something new, something useful. It didn't seem to take much to make him happy.

"Cancer's a better diagnosis than an infection at this point," Foreman finally said. "The spinal tap was clean."

"Except we haven't found any actual signs of actual cancer," House said, "just symptoms."  
"The fluid they withdrew in the ER was exudate," Foreman said. "I'd thought it was another sign of infection, but it could be from a malignancy."

House turned back to the light board, put his hand up against the light, his fingers following the outline of muscle and tissue.

Thirteen was sure she hadn't missed anything. So was Taub. But she leaned forward waiting to see House point something out, something they'd all missed.

When he turned away, she was almost disappointed.

"So," he said, and walked past them, through the door, back into the conference room. He'd left a path clear to the white board, which was on the other side of the room, for some reason.

"What the hell happened in here?" Foreman stood at the doorway, his arms spread wide.

"Kutner did it," House said.

"You ..." Kutner stepped closer to House. He leaned in close. "You told me to." Maybe he'd meant to whisper, but his voice carried across the room.

"Don't blame me, blame Foreman," House said.

"What?" Foreman asked. "No way, House."

House sighed, his head swaying from side to side as he exaggerated the rolling of his eyes. "You were the one who said we couldn't get to the coffee with the white board over here."

"And, we can't get to the coffee translates to destroying the room how?" Foreman had his hands on his hips.

Foreman never seemed happy -- amused sometimes, as he watched House or watched them, caught up in some private joke that he seemed to think they'd never understand -- but never happy.

"If we move the bookshelves, then we've got room for the white board over here," House said. "To move the bookshelves, we have to move the books."

"So you had Kutner move the books," Foreman said.

"Well, I'm not doing it." House held up his cane. "Cripple."

"Here's another idea," Foreman said. "You could just put the board back over where you had it before."

"But that wouldn't be any fun."

"No, but you might get more work done, and you'd have the doctors who work for you practicing medicine, rather than doing heavy labor."

"It's not heavy labor," House said, "it's moving a few books around."

Foreman crossed his arms over his chest and stared at House.

House stared back, then turned to the board. He uncapped a marker and drew a thick black line through the word "infection." "I suppose we could always spend a few more hours proving that you were wrong," he said. "That's always fun." He looked back at Foreman. Foreman didn't budge.

House turned back to the board and crossed out "post-MI."

"And that leaves autoimmune, and cancer -- coming up fast." House capped the pen and nodded toward Thirteen. "You do the ANA yet?"

"What?"

"An antinuclear antibody test, you've heard of it, right?" he asked. "It's a little thing we like to do to check for autoimmune diseases."

Thirteen's eyebrows drew together. She thought back over everything House had ordered in the past few hours, the conversations they'd had in the room. She turned to look at Taub. Maybe he was supposed to tell her something and didn't. Or maybe he'd just "forgotten" to tell her.

"You ... didn't ask for an ANA," she said.

"But you thought it might be autoimmune," House said. "So why didn't you run the ANA?"

He didn't seem angry, she thought. Maybe he was just tired. It was getting dark outside. She hadn't looked at her watch for a while, but knew it was getting late, and that she was tired, so maybe he was too. Maybe he thought he'd told her to follow up.

"I was busy with the other tests," she said.

"So why didn't you ask Foreman to do it, as long as he was looking for the nonexistent infection?"

"I ..." She heard someone move next to her, and she jumped slightly at the sound. She'd forgotten that anyone else was there. House had that ability to bring you into his world, whether you wanted to be there or not.

"Taub was running tests with you, but he was at least still thinking about cancer. What were you thinking about?"

Thirteen didn't answer. She felt her skin grow hot, hoped it wasn't turning red, giving away the frustration and embarrassment she was feeling as House called her out.

"Any doctor can treat," House said. "Some can even treat properly. You're here to diagnose. We need to treat his conditions, but if we don't find out what went wrong in the first place, he won't get any better. Don't forget that."

Thirteen nodded

"Run the ANA now," he said.

House finally looked away and she felt herself breathing again. She wasn't sure if she'd actually stopped breathing for a minute, or just forgotten everything that had happened in the last few minutes except the sound of House's voice.

"Foreman, you and Kutner do the needle cath, and grab some more fluid for testing while you're in there. Taub?" He picked up a book and tossed it at him. Taub looked surprised, but made a fumbling catch to grab it against his chest. "You've got some tests of your own to run if you're going to prove lymphoma, but first I've got a special job for you," House said.


	4. Foreman

_Foreman_

"You shouldn't put up with his crap." Foreman glanced over at Kutner, then back at the monitor as he lined up the needle at the best spot to go in and drain the excess fluid.

"I don't mind," Kutner said.

The patient hadn't said much when they'd rolled him in to the procedure room, just looked at the equipment, and quietly answered Kutner's questions.

"I guess I'm a little nervous," he'd said, just before Kutner injected the Versed that would allow him to drop off into something like sleep.

"Everyone is," Foreman had told him. "I'd tell you not to worry, but it's normal to be a little worried."

The patient had looked at him for just a few seconds, then looked away, firsts at the leads on his chest, then at the monitoring equipment. His fingers fiddled with the rough texture of the thin blanket that covered him. "But this'll fix everything, right?" he asked.

He'd looked over at Kutner when he asked, and Foreman decided to let Kutner handle him. The guy seemed to be more comfortable with him, anyway. Probably because every time Foreman walked into his sight, he was carrying needles in his hands, and had no handy answers to any of his questions.

"It's the same procedure they did before, to remove the pressure from your heart," Kutner had explained, "but we still need to find out what's causing the fluid to build up there in the first place. If we don't, it could keep happening."

The patient hadn't asked anything else, just nodded when Kutner asked if he was ready. He'd seemed to welcome the drug when it hit his veins, had taken a deep breath, let his eyes close.

Foreman didn't blame him. The guy was tired, overwhelmed, Foreman thought. Being a patient wasn't easy, even when you knew what was happening and why. He'd hated not knowing what was happening back when he was the one stuck in a bed. It wasn't normal being the one with no power, the one left to rely on everyone else, the one in pain, the one with nowhere else to turn.

He tried to shake the memories of those days out of his head. It wasn't always easy, though he'd never admitted that to anyone -- not his Dad, not Cameron when she asked, not even Wendy. Maybe that had been the first sign that things wouldn't last with Wendy, when he found excuses to hold back on telling her anything important.

Being a patient sucked. It changed everything, but from the moment he'd stepped back into House's office, he'd known that he changed nothing at all.

He looked again at the screen, at the black and white outlines of the heart muscle and pericardial sac. He picked up a scalpel, made a small incision in the skin, then switched to the large bore needle, put it into place at the incision and pushed -- the point moving past the ribs and toward the shadow on the screen that told him where the fluid was.

Concentrate on the patient, Foreman told himself. That was the best way to ignore feelings best left buried -- the best way to think about anyone other than himself.

He glanced over at Kutner again. "Maybe you don't mind if House treats you like crap, but you should," he said. "House likes to take advantage of people."

"I moved some books," Kutner said. "It wasn't a big deal." He adjusted the ultrasound probe to give Foreman a better view of the heart.

"Maybe it didn't seem like a big deal this time, but what'll he want tomorrow? Or next week? Or next month?" Foreman wondered if House had changed sometime in the months he'd been gone, had gotten even worse than Foreman had remembered. He'd always treated other people like crap, but his stupid hiring game had only seemed to bring out the worst in him, and in them.

Foreman wanted to believe that he'd never been as gullible as Kutner, never as devious as Taub or played the coy games that Thirteen had done so well. House hadn't been able to push him around, he told himself, but knew that wasn't true. Not completely.

He'd broken into his first house on the first case House had ever given him, and it had felt almost natural. He didn't question it, even after he'd been exposed during a search, and nearly died. House had sent him out again, and he'd done it again.

Maybe, Foreman thought, he had just learned to recognize the extent of House's games now, after he'd had time away them. He could see the others falling into the same patterns and the same mistakes that he'd made. Someone should warn them.

"I'm not you," Kutner said, and Foreman wondered if he'd said something out loud. "I don't feel like I have to fight House every day."

"I don't fight him just for fun," Foreman said.

"That's not what it looks like."

Foreman looked over at Kutner again. He always looked happy, anxious to try some new stunt, even if it meant blowing something up -- hell, especially if it meant blowing something up. Everybody liked Kutner. Foreman didn't. Not really. He wasn't tough enough for this job. House would just use him up, and toss him out. Hell, House had only hired him to force Cuddy into adding another spot. Another game. He didn't have the skills to keep up, and he'd only fall behind and drag someone else down with him. Maybe it'd be someone else on the team, and maybe it'd be a patient.

Foreman paused with the needle just outside the pericardium. He looked at Kutner. "House doesn't need someone giving him everything he wants," he said. "You're not helping him, or the patients."

"Maybe House doesn't need someone questioning every move he makes," Kutner said. "Maybe I give him some credit for knowing what he's doing, most of the time. There's nothing wrong with that."

Foreman shook his head and looked back at the monitor. Kutner still didn't understand, and he was beginning to think he never would.

He pushed the needle through the wall of the pericardium, pulled back on the plunger and began drawing out the fluid. It was milky white, rather than clear. He watched the screen, judging when he'd removed enough fluid to ease the pressure on the patient's heart.

Nearly 80 milliliters had been drained by the time he eased the needle out.

Kutner kept the probe over the heart for a few moments longer, watching the heart beat out its normal rhythm.

"You're right," Foreman said, "House usually does know what he's doing. The problem is, sometimes he's taking a chance -- a big chance -- with a patient's life. You've got to know when it's the right one." He glanced over at Kutner again. "If you want him to respect you, you better learn how to tell him 'no.'"

"I know what I'm doing too," Kutner said.

Foreman siphoned off some of the fluid for more tests, then began cleaning up. "I'm sure you do," he said.

* * *

This was House's fault -- he was the one who'd set up a game, forced Foreman into a competition he had no intention of playing. It's was Cuddy's fault. She was the one who made it clear that he was her eyes and ears, turning him into a high class snitch, an informer. It was Mercy's fault, for firing him for the sin of saving a life.

"You asked for this, you know," Chase said.

"Yeah, right, I keep forgetting that page in my contract that confirmed my status as a scapegoat," Foreman said.

"More of a social pariah, don't you think?" Chase leaned forward to take a bite from his sandwich. His hair fell forward across his forehead.

Foreman had been sitting by himself in the cafeteria, stopping on his way to the lab. Taub and Thirteen were sitting at another table in the middle of the room. They'd seen him come in, but ignored him, and he'd done the same.

He looked over at House and Wilson, sitting on the other side of the room. Wilson had dinner on his tray, House had just had a cup of coffee in front of him, but he'd picked up a spoon and was finishing off Wilson's potatoes before Wilson got to them. If Foreman had to guess, he'd say that meant Wilson expected to be in his office for another few hours. House didn't.

Kutner had volunteered to take Osbourne to radiology for a follow-up x-ray, then he'd transfer him back to the ICU and monitor him to make sure he was stable. Foreman knew he probably had only a few minutes before House would come looking for him. He'd planned to fill his plate at the salad bar, but heard the wind whip past the windows and filled a soup bowl instead. Vegetable noodle with a thick beef broth. He was sitting there, sipping the thick broth and dunking crackers into the bowl when Chase pulled out a chair and sat next to him. He hadn't even asked if he wanted company.

"I hear House has half the maintenance staff rearranging his office," Chase said now.

"One shelf," Foreman said, "and the last I knew he had Taub doing it."

Chase nodded across the room. "He's not doing it now," he pointed out, "and when's the last time House stopped at just one of anything?"

Foreman looked over at Chase, who grinned and raised his eyebrows twice.

"Crap." Foreman pushed his chair back from the table.

Chase held out a hand, not quite touching Foreman's arm, willing him to sit, Foreman thought, rather than holding him back. "Stay," he said. "Let Cuddy deal with it." Foreman stared at his hand, hovering there -- a request, rather than a demand.

"Cuddy shouldn't have to deal with it," he said, but sat down again.

"But that's her job, not yours."

Foreman shook his head.

"You can't make House do anything he doesn't want to," Chase pointed out. "Why put yourself through hell?"

"Because I'm ..."

"You're one of his fellows, just like them."

"I'm not like them," Foreman said. "At least I wasn't." He knew he didn't have any special privileges at PPTH. He'd lost that job already, back when he'd turned Cuddy down the first time. It was gone. So was everything else, except this.

"You came back here for a reason," Chase reminded him.

"I came back, because everyplace else blackballed me," Foreman said.

"And because," Chase said, "there's no place else where you could do the kind of medicine you can with House."

And no place else, Foreman thought, that would allow a diagnostics trained intensivist to take the fast track into surgery.

"So what, because Cuddy is the warden of this insane asylum, I should just let her handle House?"

"Why not? You keep saying that you don't want to be House. Maybe you should stop trying to be Cuddy too."

Foreman shook his head. Chase didn't understand. He never did. He'd always had it easy, floating along in House's wake, and now he was just following another stream with surgery. Life wasn't that easy. Medicine wasn't that easy. And House sure as hell was never that easy.

"There's a storm out there, don't you have some emergency surgery to get to?" Foreman finally asked.

"Already did some," Chase said. "Thought I'd eat before the next case came in."

Chase took another bite of his sandwich and Foreman went back to eating his soup and did his best to ignore Chase along with Taub and Thirteen.

He looked over to where House had been, but Wilson was alone now. He hadn't noticed when House had left. For a man with a cane, he had an ability to sidle in and out of places unseen -- when he wanted.

He knew Chase was right, that there were things he could do at Princeton-Plainsboro that he couldn't do anywhere else. But that didn't mean he should stop trying to be something more -- more than House expected and more than Cuddy asked for.

And he knew that Chase was right that he might be happier if he wasn't trying to do his job and Cuddy's at the same time. But habits die hard, and sometimes it was just too hard to censor that part of his brain that still expected him to be running a department by now. The part that he'd tried to shut down.

Chase's beeper went off, with the same combination of tones that he'd always used. Foreman guessed he'd never bothered to change it once he started in the new department. He looked at the number, then stood, picking up his tray. "Gotta go," he said, and walked away, still eating the last half of his sandwich.

Foreman spooned up the last of his soup, then lingered over his coffee. Maybe he should take it over to Taub and Thirteen's table, tell them that they'd gotten off to a bad start. Now that they were all a team, they should learn to work together. He'd managed to work well enough to Taub on occasion, there was no reason why he couldn't do it with everyone. He could mentor them, let them know more about working with House. Or maybe that offer would fall just as flat with them as it had with Kutner.

He jerked slightly as his beeper went off. He looked at the extension. House. He looked over at the other table. Neither Taub nor Thirteen had moved, which meant that House just wanted to yank his chain, rather than the entire team's. Or maybe he just hadn't gotten to them yet.

Foreman leaned back in his chair, put his hands over his eyes, took a deep breath. Then a second one. And a third. He put his hands down, then leaned forward, pushed back his chair and picked up his tray. Might as well get it over with.

He heard shouts coming from the conference room as soon as he stepped off the elevator, and picked up the pace. He was at a jog when he came around the corner, then broke into a sprint when he couldn't see anything through the glass.

Foreman opened the door. There were three guys in maintenance coveralls on the far side of the room, manhandling one of the bookshelves out of place. A second shelf was against the glass wall that faced the hallway, the blinds closed. The small one that should have been near the coffee maker had been shoved back toward the hallway.

"Wait," Foreman said. He looked through the glass into House's office. It was dark.

"You Foreman?" one of the custodians asked.

"Yeah."

"Dr. House said to give you this." He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, handed it to Foreman. Foreman unfolded it, and stepped into House's office. He wouldn't have been surprised if House was sitting there in the dark, watching him. He flicked on the light. The room was empty.

He looked at the paper.

"Gone home," it read. "Monitor the sick guy. Call if he gets worse. And make sure the janitor guys move the stuff into the right place."

There was a diagram at the bottom of the page, the conference room in reverse, with the bookshelves closest to the hallway, the conference table near the windows. Foreman crumpled up the paper. The janitors were looking at him.

"Look," he said, but the door opened before he could say anything else, and Kutner walked in.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I don't ..."

The door opened again, Taub this time, followed by Thirteen.

"What did you need?" Thirteen asked.

Foreman stared at them.

"I got a page," Kutner said.

Thirteen and Taub both nodded. "Me too," Thirteen said.

"From House?" Foreman knew the answer even as he asked it.

"From you." Taub held his pager display toward Foreman. It was Foreman's extension.

Kutner reached for his too, but Foreman held out a hand. "I believe you," he said.

"If you're busy, we can take a break," one of the maintenance guys said.

Foreman put his hands on his hips, looked down at the carpet. He wondered if House was around a corner somewhere, watching him and laughing. Maybe he'd set up a camera somewhere.

He couldn't guess what it was that House thought he'd get out of it. It wasn't even worth the effort to try and figure it out. It was probably just some kind of a warped test by House to see how he'd respond.

He looked at the janitors, then at the rest of the team. He knew how to cope when things went crazy with a patient. One step at a time. Handle what you can, one thing at a time. He might as well try the same tactic now.

He turned to the maintenance crew. "He tell you what he wanted?"

"Kind of," one of the guys said. He seemed to be in charge so Foreman concentrated on him. Let him handle the others. "Here," he said. He flattened the paper against the door frame, tore the diagram off the bottom and handed it to him. "Does that make sense?"

The guy studied it, turned it sideways and it out to compare the rough lines to the actual room and its contents. He nodded.

"Great," Foreman said. "I'll let you get to it then."

He motioned the others into House's office and they followed him. He stopped in the middle of the room and held the top half of the paper between his fingers. "House went home. How about we take shifts watching the guy so we can all get some sleep."

"I'm still waiting for the final ANA analysis," Thirteen said.

"I'm running the blood and urine for cancer markers," Taub said.

"I'm ..." Kutner looked at the others, then shrugged. "I'm free, I guess."

"Great," Foreman said. "I guess it's you and me then." He caught Taub and Thirteen sharing a look. He couldn't quite convince himself that they weren't enjoying seeing him in this position. Hell, he probably would have loved to stick Chase with the overnight shift. He flinched slightly. He already had, more than once.

"We might as well break this up," Foreman told Kutner. "You want to take the first shift?"

Kutner didn't bother hiding his disappointment, but nodded his head anyway.

Something crashed in the other room, and Foreman closed his eyes, tried to ignore whatever it was that was happening there. Maybe Chase was right, and he should just let it slide, let Cuddy handle it. He heard another thump through the glass and opened his eyes. "Let me take care of this," he said, and pushed open the door to the conference room, and looked back at Kutner. "I'll see you in a few hours."

* * *

Foreman managed to get a few hours sleep in his own bed before he crawled out from between the sheets just before 2 a.m. It would have made more sense to stay at the hospital, to crash in one of the on-call rooms, or even scope out a couch in an empty lounge. But going home always made him feel like he was getting a fresh start, like he could start over again -- even if nothing else changed.

Kutner was at the nurse's station when he walked into the ICU, told him that the patient was stable, and still resting, then said he was going to find an empty bed in an on-call room for a few hours sleep.

"You could go home, get some real rest," Foreman pointed out.

Kutner just smiled. "I've slept in a lot worse places," he said, then left.

It was just after four o'clock when Foreman slipped into the patient's room, pushing the ultrasound cart in front of him. Osbourne stirred slightly as the cart bumped up against the bed. Foreman checked the monitors. Osbourne's heart rate was slower than it had been thirty minutes earlier. He looked like he'd been sleeping soundly. Too bad Foreman had to wake him up.

"Mr. Osbourne?" he asked. The man stirred again, took a deep breath, then coughed, came awake. "Mr. Osbourne?"

"Ozzy," he answered, opening his eyes.

Foreman smiled. "Right. Ozzy."

Osbourne shifted on the bed, looked at the equipment, then at Foreman.

"Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to take a look at your heart, see how it's doing," Foreman said.

He nodded, didn't complain. Some patients never did, even when they should, Foreman thought.

"This will only take a couple of minutes, then you can get some more rest," Foreman said.

"I'd get more rest at home," Osbourne said.

"I know." Foreman smiled. "Hospitals can be crazy places sometimes." He spread open Osbourne's gown, spread warmed gel on the paddle.

He'd just placed the probe on Osbourne's chest, and was looking at the first images when he heard the door slide open, and Kutner stepped in.

"Hey," Kutner said. He nodded at Osbourne.

"I thought you were getting some sleep," Foreman said.

"I was, but I had an idea." Kutner stared at the monitor, then glanced at Foreman. He'd seen the same thing Foreman did, the first signs of swelling inside the pericardium again, fluid filling the sac once more.

It was still early, Foreman thought. They might be able to control it with meds.

"We should start him on an NSAID," Kutner said, echoing Foreman's thoughts. "Indomethacine?"

Foreman nodded. "That's what I'd do," he said. He froze the picture on the screen, printed it. He knew House would want to see it.

Kutner reached out, touched Foreman's hand before Foreman could turn off the machine. "I want to check something," he said.

Foreman held out the paddle, but Kutner didn't take it yet. Instead he lowered the blanket and opened the gown wider, exposing more of Osbourne's torso. "Just another minute, Ozzy," he said.

Osbourne seemed to be half asleep again, and he just mumbled in response.

Kutner placed the paddle onto Osbourne's abdomen, began moving it slowly from the upper left quadrant down, then to the right.

"You're thinking ..." Foreman said, his voice softer.

"What if Taub's right?" Kutner said. He didn't say the word "cancer." He didn't have to. "He came in with abdominal pain."

Foreman nearly pointed out that the pain was linked to Osbourne's nausea, but didn't. Once they'd ruled out appendicitis and there were no other signs of pain, they'd barely mentioned it. Taub should have thought of doing this, Foreman thought. Hell, so was he. Maybe if House hadn't been so busy playing games with his mind -- if Foreman himself wasn't so busy playing politics with the fellows and Cuddy alike, maybe he would have.

"Spleen's enlarged," Kutner pointed out.

Foreman nodded. "We knew that from the ER report," he said, "but it's clean," he noted. It could mean anything, or nothing. He froze the picture on the monitor and printed it anyway.

Kutner moved on, across the torso, down. He slowed the probe, backed up and froze the picture. He looked up at Foreman, who nodded, then printed the screen.

"It's time to call House," he said.

"This better be good," House said. Foreman heard his voice before House came into sight, making his way past the bookshelves and finally into the middle of the conference room.

There was snow on his coat, and the cuffs of his jeans were damp. Foreman wondered how much more snow had fallen, then guessed that the maintenance crews hadn't plowed the parking lots yet. Probably because half of the overnight crew had spent three hours rearranging this room.

"We re-did the echo..." Foreman started, but House ignored him. He took a half-step toward the bookshelves in the new spot, then stopped. As he turned, House's coat shifted, and Foreman saw a damp spot on the seat on House's jeans, extending around to his right hip.

"I like it," House said, looking at the shelves. "Very Fortress of Solitude."

"The Fortress of Solitude was made of ice, not steel," Kutner said.

House stared at him, shook his head slightly. He stepped over to the table, leaning heavily on his cane, grabbed the closest chair and pushed the books still piled onto it in a heap onto the floor. "I hope you called me for something other than a repeat echo showing that the inflammation is back," he said.

"How did you know ..." Kutner said, but House interrupted him.

"Because we still haven't fixed the underlying problem, and while you may be enough of an idiot to call me for a simple test result, Foreman isn't."

Kutner didn't even wince, just accepted the insult and House's explanation. He was an idiot, Foreman thought, and handed House the printout so he could see for himself.

Three small but solid masses on the liver, grouped together in a neat cluster.

"You find this?" House asked.

"It was Kutner's idea," Foreman said.

"Why not yours?" House turned to Taub.

"I was in the lab, checking for cancer markers."

House turned the paper toward him. "Something like this is a lot easier to spot," he said.

Taub drew himself up. "Yeah," he agreed.

"So," House put the paper on the table, "let's cut him open and see what's behind door number three."


	5. Chase

_Chase_

"Special request for you." Chase took the file from Parise's hand. He put down his coffee and opened it, then came to a stop after reading the first few lines on the first page.

"House asked for me?" he asked.

"No," Parise took the chair next to Chase and sat, slouching into the dark red cushions. "Murphy wants you to scrub in."

"Why?"

Parise raised his eyebrows, looked at him as if he was stupid. "Because it's House's patient," he said.

Chase knew that Parise didn't like him. He had made it clear that he thought Chase had taken a spot that should have gone to another candidate, one who'd already gone through the traditional training for a surgical residency.

"I know," Chase said, "but then why does Murphy want me there?"

Parise gave an exaggerated sigh and flung one leg over the arm of the chair. It was his favorite chair, the one that interns learned to vacate whenever he came in the room. He was in his third year of residency, and loved to flaunt his power, to intimidate anyone with less seniority. He hated the fact that Chase didn't care about him or his power.

"Because you're his pet."

Chase snorted. "Pet? He fired me."

"Right, he fired you," Parise said, "then somehow a spot just happens to open for you, that should have gone to someone with real surgical experience..."

Chase rolled his eyes. It was Parise's usual complaint. He'd made it clear that he thought Chase didn't belong there.

"Then," Parise continued, "you end up scrubbing in on every high profile surgery that comes in here."

"I don't have any control over that," Chase said. "Neither does House."

"No, but Cuddy does. And everybody knows that she does whatever House wants."

Chase shook his head. The relationship between House and Cuddy was complex, insane. He didn't understand it, and he'd witnessed it for nearly four years. There was no way that he could ever explain it.

"Besides," Parise said, "House never barges into the OR when you're in there."

Sure he does, Chase almost wanted to say, but then stopped, thought about it. House had shown up when he'd been scrubbing in for surgery, had stopped him as he stepped out of the OR, had let Taub blackmail him. But he hadn't actually walked in during a surgery.

Chase shrugged. "Not yet," he finally said.

Parise shook his head. Chase could see that he didn't believe him, thought he was lying, thought he was covering something up. Unlike House, though, he didn't push the point, didn't actually accuse him of anything. And if he wasn't going to push the issue, then neither would Chase. It wasn't worth trying to convince him he was wrong, when he'd never admit to being wrong about anything.

"Think what you want," Chase said. He picked up the file, swallowed down the last of his coffee. "I've got work to do."

Chase read over the report while he walked down the hall. He smiled when he noticed Cameron's name as the referring physician. She'd caught another case, just as she'd said she could do back when she took Cuddy's offer.

He'd never doubted it. He knew her choice didn't make much sense from the outside, but then neither had his.

"I'm glad you want to stay," Cuddy had said when he'd shown up in her office a week after House fired him. "I was hoping it would be in intensive care."

She'd gestured at the papers spread across her desk. Chase had guessed that they were the ones she'd prepared with his name on them. "I've got a position ready for you in intensive care, if you want it," she said.

He'd just shaken his head.

"Neonatal?" she'd asked. "You did good there before. It's hard to impress NICU nurses, but you did."

Chase hadn't bothered answering. He knew he could fit in there, but every time he walked past those rooms, he saw Mikey's body again, another child he couldn't save.

"I did rotations in surgery back in Melbourne," he'd said. It was true. He'd even considered surgery back then, but then was drawn into intensive care -- the rapid fire speed of it, the demands to think quickly, to act even faster.

Cuddy had nodded. "I know," she'd said, "but you'd have to start over here. Residency, no fellowship, no special privileges."

"I know."

Cuddy had looked down at the papers, then up at him. "Can you at least tell me why?"

Chase had looked down at the carpet. He wasn't sure if he could explain it to himself yet, just felt something driving at him, wanting to know more, to do something more, to try new roads, new specialties. He'd told himself that the fact that House had two specialties beyond diagnostics didn't have anything to do with his own desire to add another to his experience.

He'd looked up. Cuddy had still been waiting. Chase guessed she'd learned patience working with House for years.

"I can do more with surgery," he'd finally said. "Something's wrong, you go in and fix it."

"I thought you'd done pretty well with the part about finding out what's wrong in the first place," she'd said.

"I can still do that in surgery," he'd said, giving her the same answer he'd given Cameron earlier. It hadn't been a lie, though it wasn't the whole truth. Sometimes he wasn't sure if he even knew the whole truth now, more than six months later. "There are things you can only see in the O.R." he said, and leaned forward, looked Cuddy in the eye. "It seems like you'd want someone in the O.R. who knows how to diagnose too."

She'd stared at him, blue eyes that were darker than House's, but with nearly the same intensity, the same ability to judge a person's words and actions. She'd finally nodded.

"No promises," she'd said, but three days later he'd had the offer: nearly the same money he'd made working for House, but part of the surgical staff.

Murphy had been the first one to get up and shake his hand the morning he'd shown up for the new job.

"House is an idiot," he'd said. "I'm not."

Chase had scrubbed in on some of Murphy's surgeries back when he was still working for House, including one of Andie's. Now he'd made it clear that he wanted to mentor him. Chase wasn't complaining. Murphy was a good guy, a great surgeon. He wasn't House -- no worldwide reputation, no high wire acts -- but that wasn't a bad thing. He was stable. Comfortable. And Chase reminded himself again that was a good thing.

He wasn't lying to himself, but still he had to admit that he missed the excitement of working with House. That feeling of being caught up in a whirlwind, of never knowing what would happen next. The satisfaction of knowing that they'd done something no one else could. Surgery didn't have that. He hadn't done anything yet that others on the staff couldn't do.

But surgery had a kind of security that he'd never had with House, and security was a good thing.

He'd nearly laughed when one of the residents bragged about the work they did, comparing the surgeons to cowboys, saying that no other specialty had the same thrills. They didn't know how much they were missing.

Murphy was already there when Chase walked into the scrub room, meticulously making his way with the soap and scrub brush up toward his elbows. "You do anything with livers yet?" he asked.

Chase turned on the faucet and reached for a soap packet, broke it open. "Observed a couple of transplants," he said. He worked the soap into a lather between his fingers, under his nails.

"This won't be that exciting. Three growths, all pretty close together," Murphy said. "Nothing's that simple in the liver, but it should be straightforward." He put down the soap, started rinsing. "We'll go in, cut them out and send a sample to pathology to confirm."

"Pathology?" Chase asked.

Murphy nodded and began to rinse off the soap.

Chase scrubbed harder. If House wanted the growths biopsied, that meant that he still didn't know what was going on. This wasn't just a resection, it was a diagnostics test. He looked over at Murphy, wondering if he realized that, then wondered if he should mention it.

He didn't.

"Hurry up," Murphy said and toweled his hands dry. "I wouldn't want to start without you."

Chase nodded. It wouldn't make any difference if Murphy knew that House was still looking for answers. House would still want it done anyway, and Murphy would still have to do it.

He finished scrubbing, then ran his hands and arms under the warm water. He took a sterile towel, then backed into the O.R.

Chase caught a glimpse of the patient as he put on his gloves. The man was fairly young, and looked pale under the bright lights. A bit of dark hair peeked out from under the surgical cap. He was already sedated, and the anesthesiologist was intubating him.

Murphy motioned to him from the table, and Chase walked over.

"Why don't you get us started," Murphy said.

Chase took a scalpel, placed it against the man's skin. He applied pressure and the first few drops of blood appeared. He pushed past the skin, into a band of yellowish fat and finally into muscle.

"Good," Murphy said, and took over, making steady progress toward the liver.

Chase remembered the first time he'd seen inside a human body, the way that everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, and yet nothing looked the same as any of the diagrams or photos he'd studied.

He stepped aside as one of the nurses suctioned blood from the incision. He sensed movement from somewhere above them and he looked up, past Murphy to the observation deck. The lights were bright in his eyes and he couldn't make out any details, but recognized the silhouette: tall and slender, with the right shoulder raised slightly over the left, the right elbow locked tightly against his side, the hand on a cane that Chase couldn't see, but knew was there.

"He hasn't said anything yet," Murphy said. His eyes above his mask were bright -- maybe with amusement, maybe with anger. Chase didn't know him well enough yet to know what Murphy was thinking. "Maybe House really does trust you."

Chase shook his head. "House doesn't trust anyone," he said.

"Well then, let's hurry up and get this done, before he remembers that."

* * *

Chase took the familiar steps out from the O.R., past concrete walls and into the dark wood, glass and chrome facade that covered the walls in the public areas of the hospital. The patient was in post-op now, and he was taking the same path he had walked so many times before.

It felt a little like going home, though Chase knew that wouldn't make sense to anyone but him. Or maybe Cameron. He stepped into the elevator and leaned back against the dark walls and remembered his father's study in Melbourne with its heavy bookshelves, the garden that Mum had loved, his own bedroom on the second floor with windows that looked out over the hills and toward the ocean.

But that was gone now -- had been for years. They'd sold the house three months after Mum died. He hadn't even bothered to drive past it once he left. It didn't mean anything.

Somehow, though, those two rooms upstairs still held him, kept bringing him back. He used to find excuses to go upstairs, to walk past the glass walls. Sometimes he'd tell himself that he was just checking up on the new fellowship candidates. Sometimes he'd convince himself to go check on a patient who happened to be on the same floor. Sometimes he'd just happen to need the bathroom that was just down the hall.

He didn't know what he was looking for. Usually the rooms were empty, just the familiar layout of the table and chairs, all empty, House's team -- or the people who might someday be his team -- gathered in one of the lecture halls. But sometimes he'd see House in his office, bent over his desk as he read something, or tossing and catching his ball again and again, or sometimes just staring out into space, at something only he could see.

He stopped making excuses for checking on House the day after House jammed a knife into an electrical socket. He'd rushed to House's room, knowing that he was stable, knowing that there was nothing that he could do, but knowing he had to be there.

"Why ..." He couldn't even get the question out, and Wilson hadn't seemed to know what to say. He'd just shaken his head, keeping his eyes on House as he lay there.

A day later, Wilson had found him in the lounge. "Because he's an idiot," he'd said, finally answering the question Chase hadn't been able to ask.

He'd sat next to Chase in the nearly empty room. "He wanted to prove that there was no afterlife."

Chase had felt his eyebrows raise. "You're ... you're joking, right?"

Wilson had leaned back, rubbed at his eyes. "He's an idiot," he repeated.

Chase had only nodded. After Wilson left, he'd started to wonder if there had been any signs that House was about to do something stupid, something he or Cameron would have seen if they'd been there. The new candidates wouldn't know what to look out for, wouldn't be able to see that moment when House's curiosity slipped over into obsession.

He went by House's office more often, stopping outside to watch him, if only for a few minutes. He'd make sure to take a break when he knew House would be in the cafeteria, or he'd arrange to meet Cameron in the lobby when he knew House would be passing through on his way home.

One day House waved him in as Chase paused outside the office door.

"I've got a deal for you," House had said. "It's a sure thing."

Chase had found himself nodding as House spoke, explaining how they could both make money from the pool. He found it easy to picture how it would happen, felt how easy it was to once again slide so easily into House's circle.

"It's perfect," House had said. "They'll never suspect you. They think you hate me."

"Who says I don't?" Chase had asked.

House had just leaned back in is chair, the hint of a smile still in his eyes.

The elevator doors opened and Chase shook off the memories, walked out and around the corner. Familiar steps. Just like coming home.

Except.

He came to a stop in the hallway. This wasn't familiar. The blinds were open, but nothing was where it belonged.

He opened the door, walked in. The shelves that should be against the far wall were at his left. The table was next to the window, its surface piled high with books.

"The ANA was negative," came a voice. Thirteen. "I ran it twice."

"It's got to be cancer," another voice. Taub. "Paraneoplastic syndrome would explain the effusion."

The words were familiar, even if the voices weren't. The give and take of the DDX.

He stepped out from behind the shelves. "It's not cancer."

"Who asked you?" House was sitting on the chair closest to the white board, his right hand gripping his leg just above the knee.

"You did, when you asked for the surgery." Chase crossed his arms over his chest. "We removed the growths and sent a sample down to path, but I took a look. I'm willing to bet you whatever you want that it's not cancer. They're cysts. Benign."

House nodded toward Taub. "Go take a look," he said. Taub looked at House, then at Chase. He dumped out his coffee and walked away.

Chase stared at the board, his eyes moving along the list of symptoms, then to the possible diagnoses. "Infection" was already crossed out. So was "post-MI." Chase found himself studying the words as well, trying to think of what else would fit.

"It's autoimmune," House said, and took a drink of coffee.

"But the ANA ..." Thirteen said.

"ANA isn't perfect," Foreman said. "Some diseases don't respond to it, and depending on what you're looking for, up to 20 percent of the time you get a false negative."

"So why run the tests at all?" Kutner muttered.

"Because up to 80 percent of the time, you get the right answer," Chase said.

House leaned back. "Run it again," he said to Thirteen. "Run them all again. Check everything." He pointed to Kutner, "and take him with you."

Kutner groaned, but got up and followed Thirteen.

House held out a marker to Chase. "Take cancer off the list," he said.

Chase paused for just a moment before taking the marker. He uncapped it and stepped up to the board, remembering every time House told him he wasn't ready for it yet. He put the felt tip against the white surface, then drew a steady mark through the word.

He stared at it for a moment longer, then backed away.

Foreman drew his attention away as he pushed himself back from the table, walked to the coffee maker. House held up his mug and Foreman grabbed it on his way. He held out the pot to Chase, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

Chase waited for House to object, to tell him to go back to surgery. He didn't.

"Sure," he said, and pulled out a chair. He leaned back, the top of the chair hitting him in that familiar spot between the T3 and T4 vertebra. He stared at the window, the skies a dark gray beyond the blinds, the wind banging against something loose somewhere beyond the glass making a steel-on-steel rattle. He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the sound, hearing the way the heater blew out hot air into the room.

"I love what you've done with the place." Chase didn't even have to open his eyes to know it was Wilson's voice.

He turned and saw Wilson standing in the middle of the room, just past the shelves. He was still wearing his coat, his briefcase in one hand, the other hand on his left hip.

"Better feng shui," House said.

Wilson looked at the shelves, looked at House. He shook his head and walked further into the room. "I thought I was going to give you a ride in this morning if it was still snowing," he said.

"Something came up," House said.

Foreman poured coffee into two cups, put one in front of House, handed the other to Chase.

Wilson put his briefcase on the floor next to a pile of books. He took of his coat, draped it over the back of a chair. "They plowed in the snow around your car," he said. "You're going to have to dig it out."

"Why do you think I kept Kutner around?"

Wilson chuckled, walked over to the coffee maker. Foreman poured him a cup, then poured the rest into his own cup. There was just a little left in the pot when he put it down.

House took a drink. "You forgot sugar," he said.

Foreman shrugged, took a seat and leaned back. "Get it yourself," he said.

House didn't bother, just winced and took another drink.

Wilson took the last empty seat. "Seriously," he said, "why'd you change everything?"

"Better privacy," he said. "This way, no one can see in."

"It would've been easier just to close the blinds," Chase pointed out.

House ignored him. Chase took a drink, let the taste of the coffee linger on his tongue, rich and bitter. It felt good here, somehow still familiar despite all the changes. Or maybe it felt family because of the changes. He knew he needed to get back downstairs. He had reports to finish. The emergency room would be backing up, which meant more emergency surgeries.

He took another drink.

"House!" Cuddy's voice was already raised when she walked into the room. "You forged my signature just to have the janitorial staff rearrange your office?" She was holding out a single sheet of paper. "At time-and-a-half?"

"It was Foreman's idea," House said.

Foreman shook his head. Cuddy didn't even bother looking at him, just tossed the paper onto the table. "I doubt it," she said.

"I wanted to have Kutner do it," House said, "but Foreman said that wasn't a good use of resources."

"This little stunt of yours is going to cost us more than two hundred dollars," Cuddy said. She crossed her arms over her chest. "You have two choices in how you'll pay it back: playing nice with some donors, or more clinic hours."

"Cash isn't good enough?"

Cuddy held out two fingers. "Donors or clinic," she said. "There is no third option."

She turned and left the room, the door swinging shut behind her. House stared at the spot where she'd been, one eyebrow cocked up as he considered his choices.

"I found a flaw in your feng shui," Wilson said. "No early warning system for visitors. They can't see you in here, but you can't see them coming either."

House rolled his eyes.

Chase took smiled as he took another drink. Just like home. There were just a few sips left. He wanted to stay, but he knew he didn't belong here. Not anymore.

He swallowed the coffee down, put the empty mug on the table and stood.

"I've got to go," he said. He took one last look in the room on his way out, at the table, at the white board, at House. "Thanks," he said, and walked out.


	6. Kutner

_Kutner_

Kutner stared at the numbers on the screen, rubbed his eyes and studied them once more.

"Negative," he finally said. "Again."

He should have gotten more sleep when he had the chance, gone back and stretched out in the on-call room once Ozzy was in surgery, but he been too wired to sleep. He could still see the look in House's eyes as he'd looked at the ultrasound report, remembered the way that House at glanced over at him. He was pretty sure that House had even given him a slight nod.

But that was more than five hours ago, and the excitement of finding tumors faded when they'd found out the growths were benign. The little of that buzz that remained faded with each hour in the lab rerunning the tests, checking again and again for things they'd already ruled out. For things Thirteen had already ruled out.

"Got the next sample ready," Thirteen said. She tried to hold back a yawn, and didn't quite succeed. Kutner knew she had to be just as tired as he was. Maybe more.

He keyed in the information and waited for the numbers to pop up on the screen.

"Negative," he said, reading the data.

She yawned again, stood up and stretched, walked to his side of the table to look at the numbers for herself. She shook her head.

"We can take a break, if you want," Kutner said.

"I'd rather get these done," Thirteen said, but she didn't go back to her seat. Instead she walked to the far side of the room, stretching her arms high over her head, the folds of her lab coat creasing between her shoulder blades as she reached higher.

"How many more do we have left?" Kutner asked.

"Three." She dropped her arms, let her head roll from one shoulder to the other as she tried to loosen up.

"If we know it's autoimmune, we should just start him on corticosteroids, see how he responds, then work out which one it is later," Kutner said.

Thirteen turned toward him again. "House won't like that," she said. "He's going to want the diagnosis no matter what."

Kutner nodded. "I know. I was just ..." he shrugged, "thinking out loud."

"You do that a lot."

"I know," he said. "Habit." He spun around in the chair to face her. "When I was a kid, I was alone a lot. It was always quiet." He'd hated that feeling, silence closing in on him and no one to know he was even alive. He sometimes thought that hell would be like that -- with nothing and no one -- forever. "Sometimes I'd talk just to hear a voice in the house, you know?" He shuddered a bit, trying to shake away the memory. "It didn't seem so lonesome."

He looked over at Thirteen. She nodded slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but then she looked away, rubbed at her eyes, and went back to her seat. "Let's get this over with," she said.

Kutner turned back to the monitor. "Sure," he said.

He told himself that Thirteen was just tired, anxious to finish up, but couldn't silence the voice in his head telling him he'd said too much again. A few months ago, he wouldn't have cared. Either people liked him or not.

But that was before House told him again and again that everyone lies. Before Cole proved it was true.

He'd liked Cole. Hell, a part of him still did -- and a part even forgave him for what he'd done. He'd heard that Cole got a position in Philadelphia, and he'd been happy for him. He wouldn't have to move right away. It was a long commute, but at least he wouldn't have to move his son halfway through the school year. No kid should have to move twice in a year, or three times.

Part of him wanted to stop and see Cole sometime, just show up at his doorstep, see how he reacted. He wanted to hear him apologize. He wanted to forgive him. But if Cole was really sorry, he would have said something already. Maybe Cole thought Kutner wouldn't forgive him. Or maybe he'd been lying about their friendship the whole time.

Kutner adjusted the equipment, tried to let the thoughts go, or at least push them somewhere into the back of his mind where he could ignore them.

"You ready?" Thirteen asked.

Kutner nodded. "Let's go."

* * *

Kutner stood just inside the conference room door. House was alone at the table, staring at the window. He followed his gaze, seeing the snow bright white against the dark gray clouds. Thirteen had said she was going to check with Taub in the path lab, and Kutner had volunteered to bring House the news that they had nothing new.

House had one hand on the edge of the table, the other working at the muscles high on his right thigh. Kutner knew that massage helped some people. For others, it was at least a distraction. Back when he was still working in rehab, he'd see people come in, muscles tight and joints stiff -- hands gripped tightly onto crutches or wheelchair wheels or canes. After each session their movement seemed to ease, at least for a few hours, even their faces marked by less tension.

House was kneading a spot on the inner part of the thigh, just above the knee. Kutner guessed he must have strained it sometime, either last night, when he'd been tired and moving slower, or this morning when he'd shown up bearing the marks of a fall in the snow with one dark spot on his jeans where he'd landed, and another, lighter one where he'd pushed himself up onto his left knee.

Kutner could almost picture the fall. When he closed his eyes he could even draw out which muscles were damaged by the way he moved. It was what he used to do -- watching people walk barefoot down hallways to study the way they moved, to know what he could fix, and what couldn't be fixed.

Sometimes he'd found himself watching House with the same eye he'd developed then. He known from the first time he'd seen him that there were things deep inside his leg that could never be repaired, and he knew that House knew that too.

"Make yourself useful," House suddenly said, and Kutner jerked slightly. House was holding up his mug. "Black," he said, "two sugars."

Kutner didn't move for a moment. "How did you ..." he started to ask, but House nodded toward the window. Kutner saw his own reflection there, the light from the hallways just bright enough to show his silhouette against the dark sky.

"I was thinking about installing a web cam, but this is cheaper," House said. He held the mug toward Kutner. "Coffee," he said.

Kutner walked over, took the mug from House's hand. The pot was nearly empty, and he wondered for a moment if House would mind if he split what was left between House's cup and one for him. Then he smiled. Of course he'd mind.

He poured the coffee in House's mug, added the sugar and gave it a quick stir.

"What happens when the blinds are closed?" he asked, handing House the mug.

"I won't close them," House said.

"What about this summer, when it's light out?" Kutner asked. "No reflection."

House took a deep breath. "There are a few bugs in the system yet," he said. "I'll figure them out."

The smart thing to would have been to keep quiet. Kutner was smart enough to know that, but you didn't anything new if you didn't ask questions. He poured grounds into the coffee filter, fit it into place.

"Nothing new on the repeat tests, right?" House said, and Kutner nodded.

He pushed the button to start the coffee brewing, listened to the water as it heated. It was quiet in the room. Kutner knew that House probably liked it that way, and that he should keep his mouth shut. But people who never asked questions, never got answers, he thought. He wanted to know everything. How House thought. Whether he'd ever made mistakes. What he'd learned from his mentors. He knew he'd never get all the answers, but that didn't mean he couldn't try.

He turned toward House. Start small. Start with something simple.

"Why'd you rearrange the room?" he asked.

He wouldn't have been surprised if House hadn't said anything, or had called him an idiot and walked away.

House took a drink. "Meerkats spend their entire lifetime in the same two square miles of desert," he said.

"You watch Animal Planet?" Kutner asked.

House ignored him. "If their food supplies run out, they'll starve to death, rather than find new territory," he said." If their alpha male and alpha female can't mate, they'll allow their entire family to die out, rather than change the social structure."

He took another drink. He was still staring out the window. Kutner could see the corner of the building, but the rest of the campus was hidden behind the storm.

"Red-tailed hawks," House continued, "range from the mountains of Alaska down to Mexico. They can forage in swamps or deserts or mountains or prairies. If their mate dies, they find another one."

He fell silent again. Kutner waited, but he didn't say anything else.

"So, what," he finally asked, "we're supposed to learn from migratory animals? Or is this about adapting to new environments?"

House finally turned to look at him, his eyes honed in on Kutner's as if he was studying his face for some sign, some symptom, some answer of his own. "What do you think?"

Kutner dared himself not to look away, not to blink. He took a deep breath. "I think," he said, "that you're never going to give me a straight answer."

He thought he caught a slight smile on House's face before House turned away, went back to staring out the window.

Kutner grinned. Maybe he'd said the right thing for once.

The coffee pot burbled again, gasped as it finished the job. Kutner poured himself a cup. He heard footsteps, and turned to see Taub walk in, followed by Thirteen.

Taub crossed the room to the coffee pot, and Kutner moved away to give him space. Thirteen walked to the table, but didn't sit. Instead she turned, walked halfway back to the door, then to the table again. Pacing. Keeping herself awake, maybe.

"Chase was right," Taub said. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took an empty seat at the table.

"I know," House said.

He took another drink, then grabbed his cane. Kutner saw him grip the handle tight, his knuckles turning white as he braced himself. House put his left hand on the table, pushed himself up, slowly. He paused there for a moment, then finally took a stuttering step away and over to the white board. He picked up the eraser and removed all of the possible diagnoses from one side of the board.

He uncapped a pen.

"If the tests won't help, we'll have to do this the hard way," House said. "Which one of these," he wrote "autoimmune" across the top, "cause these?" he asked, and pointed to the symptoms.

"Rheumatoid arthritis," Taub said.

"No joint swelling," Kutner pointed out, but House wrote it down anyway. "Reiter's syndrome," Taub said.

"No infection," Thirteen said. House wrote down Reiter's. "Kawasaki's Disease."

"No tachycardia," Taub said, "and he's not five years old."

"Kawasaki's in adults is rare, but it happens," Thirteen said.

Taub shook his head, but didn't argue. "Mixed Connective Tissue Disease?" he asked.

"It didn't show up in the ANA," Kutner said.

House added MCTD, then lupus. "If we're going to assume that the ANA is giving us false negatives, we might as well assume it's still lupus," he said. He looked at the others. "Anything else?"

Thirteen stopped pacing, stood at the end of the table. She looked at Kutner, then at House. "Even if we don't know what it is, we should start him on corticosteroids," she said.

Kutner wondered if she'd planned to make the suggestion even back when she'd told him that it was a stupid one. Maybe she had, and she was no different than Cole.

"I had Foreman start them an hour ago," House said. "How he reacts may tell us something new."

House stared at the board, the pen still in his hand. Finally he capped it, put it on the table.

"What do we do now?" Thirteen asked.

"Now?" House finally stepped away from the white board, taking careful steps across the room. "Now we wait."

He walked into his office and closed the door behind him.


	7. Wilson

_Wilson_

House's office was dark the first time Wilson went past

House's office was dark the first time Wilson went past. He'd stepped inside anyway, looking to the right to check if House was slouched down in the lounge chair. It was empty, and he headed out again.

He'd had two patient conferences and a personnel committee meeting during the morning, and it was well past noon by the time he checked his watch. He was only a few hundred feet from the cafeteria, but headed upstairs instead.

He stopped in his office first, half expecting to find House stretched out on the couch, getting some sleep or bitching that he was hungry. It was empty.

He closed the door behind him, rounded the corner. The shelves blocked his view from the hallway, and he caught only brief glimpse inside the diagnostics conference room. He could see someone standing against one of the shelves near the hallway, but only a shoulder and part of an arm in a white coat were visible, not even enough to let him see which one of House's team was there.

He pushed open the door and walked into the middle of the room. Thirteen and Taub were standing next to the table, reading book titles and arranging the books in some kind of order. Foreman was sitting on the far side of the room, writing something. He glanced up at Wilson, but then went back to his papers. Wilson half wondered if he was writing a report for Cuddy.

The white board was still in the center of the room, still covered with black ink, so the case hadn't been solved. Not yet.

He watched Thirteen move a stack of books from one end of the table to the other. "Why haven't you put those on the shelves yet?" he asked.

"House told us to wait," Taub said. "He said he has an idea about how to arrange them."

"Yeah, because 'by disease' makes no sense whatsoever," Foreman muttered.

"House in his office?" Wilson asked.

Thirteen nodded, but Foreman shook his head. "He left about ten minutes ago," he said.

"You know where he went?"

"I figured he was looking for you to buy him lunch."

"He's in the hall." Kutner's voice came from behind him, and Wilson turned to see him step out from between the shelves. He had a book in each hand.

"I was just out there," Wilson pointed out.

Kutner shook his head. "He's making the circuit," he said. "He'll be around again in a few seconds, unless he's slowed down."

Wilson took a few steps back until he could see into the hallway. After a few moments House came around the corner. "Thanks," Wilson said, and Kutner nodded.

House was moving in tight, measured steps, leaning heavily onto the cane, his right arm locked tight against his body and his shoulder hunched high as it took his body weight with every step. By tonight, his shoulder and back would gnarled masses of muscle, if they weren't already.

House nodded at Wilson as he came closer, but didn't stop or slow down. He didn't change his course, kept walking. Wilson caught up with him, then slowed his pace to match House's as they passed House's office.

"I think Foreman's writing your psych referral," Wilson said. "He was muttering something about restraints."

"Nah, it's research for his next journal article, on the cognitive impairments of long term Vicodin use," House said.

"Interesting topic. Maybe I should give him some input."

"As long as you don't expect any credit when it's published." House slowed as he came to the corner, turned right. Wilson adjusted his pace again.

After the Ketamine failed, House had managed to hang onto some of the muscle strength he'd gained during the summer, when he could move without pain, when he'd been able to stretch out ligaments and tendons tightened by years of misuse. Even once the pain returned, it had seemed like he could step just a little bit easier than he had before the Ketamine. But now he'd lost even those slight gains, his heel not quite making contact with the floor as he walked, his gait just a little less steady than it had been. Wilson had been hoping that it was his imagination, that House hadn't gotten worse, but he could see the signs more clearly when House was tired, like today, when the pain seemed to cut through everything. Nearly everything.

"You really going to leave the conference room like that?" Wilson asked.

"Why not?"

"Because you're making a mistake."

"It was not a mistake," House said. "You're the one making the mistake. A really big one."

"Dating Amber is not a mistake."

They rounded another corner. House slowed again, then stopped and leaned against the wall. He switched his cane into his left hand, reached down with his right to grip high on his thigh, above the scar tissue.

Wilson leaned against the wall next to him. "You know what I think?" he asked.

"No idea, but I'm afraid you're about to tell me." House moved his hand up to work at his hip, pushing deep into the joint.

"I think that despite everything, you enjoyed hiring your new team. You had fun with the game. The game was a distraction. It let you forget about your pain for a while."

House groaned. "I wish."

"Change can be a distraction, but your pain doesn't change. And now that the game's over and you have a new team, you need a new distraction." House pushed off from the wall and started down the hall again. Wilson let House set the pace. "Hence, the interior decorating. It gives you something different to think about."

"Rearranging the deck chairs didn't stop the Titanic from sinking," House said. "I'm in pain. Everyday. You think I'm going to forget about that just by moving a table by a few feet?"

They rounded another corner, made their way past the elevators.

"You don't know what it's like," House said. "When you live with pain every day you ..." House stopped. He was still looking at Wilson, but Wilson knew he wasn't seeing him. Not now.

After a moment, House turned and moved with a speed he hadn't had just a few seconds earlier. Wilson followed him as he pushed through the door. He crossed the room, tossed his cane onto the table and picked up the marker.

"Joint pain," he said, and added it to the list of symptoms.

"He said he doesn't ..." Kutner started to say, but House cut him off.

"This guy works construction, right? He's hauling fifty pounds of shingles onto a roof one day, laying tile the next, crawling under the foundation the day after that. He's always sore."

"He said he has muscle strains, not joint pain," Thirteen said. "No swelling."

"That's because he's an idiot. His shoulder hurts and he thinks its coming from the muscle, not the joint." House stared at his team. "He doesn't know his body as well as he thinks he does."

"You're thinking rheumatoid arthritis?" Foreman asked.

"Close." House turned back to the white board. "Adult Onset Still's Disease." He wrote the words across the top of the board.

"Fevers, difficulty breathing, pericardial effusion," he put a check mark next to each symptom as he counted them down. "And joint pain."

"No rash," Thirteen said.

"About 2 percent of cases present without a rash," House said.

"I thought Still's just affected children," Kutner said.

"It's rare in adults, but it happens," House said. "And it's intermittent, which is why it went away after he showed up at the ER last week. I'll bet that every time this guy thought he had a bad case of the flu in the past five years, it's been a Still's flare-up."

"Too bad for him that it's chronic," Wilson pointed out. "There's no cure."

"But he can be treated," House said. "We find the right combination of drugs, and maybe he can bring the symptoms under control."

House stared at the board a moment longer, then nodded and capped the pen. He looked at Thirteen. "Give him the good news," he said.

He turned toward the table. Kutner handed him his cane. House took it, then looked at the room, at the empty shelves.

"Foreman," he said, "call maintenance. Tell them put the room back the way it was." House walked across the room toward Wilson. "I'll be at lunch."

The light had leaked out of the sky without Wilson noticing it. It was dark beyond the windows, the snow still coming down, though not as hard as it had been a few hours ago.

He checked his watch. It was just after five o'clock. He knew Amber would be tied up until nearly eight, and he'd told her he'd cook. He had some chicken in the refrigerator, and a few fresh herbs, some wine. She loved watching him cook, and he loved having someone new to cook for.

He still had time to pick up some fresh vegetables if he left soon. Maybe some asparagus to remind them both that spring was only a couple of months away. She'd like that.

He'd been surprised how easy it had been to fall into another relationship, even as he told himself that it would never happen again. Even as he promised himself that he wasn't looking for anything when he saw Amber.

This time it felt different. It felt right. Wilson ignored the voice in his head reminding him that it had felt good with Julie too, at first.

He heard steps outside the door, then the knob turned and the door opened without a knock. House walked through. He almost seemed to ignore Wilson as he crossed the room, then stood at the other door leading out to the balcony.

"I thought you'd left," Wilson said.

"Car's still blocked in," House said. "I thought I'd let you offer to give me a ride."

"Sure."

House nodded, but didn't leave, didn't even move. He stood there, staring at the dark outside, at his own reflection in the glass.

"You were wrong, you know," House said. "It's not just pain that I can't change," He didn't look at Wilson.

He was quiet, watching the snow and his own shape in the window.

"When I was a kid, we went through a hurricane," he finally said. "We didn't get much of a warning, and we didn't have time to evacuate. My mom and I ended up at a shelter. It was dark, and I could hear the wind. Sometimes we'd hear a window break. It was like ..."

He paused for a moment, seemed to lose himself in the story. Wilson kept quiet.

"It was like there was a monster somewhere outside, and it wanted in," House finally said, then fell silent again.

Wilson waited, leaned back in his chair. House just stared at the glass.

"Is that what the pain's like, on days like this?" Wilson finally asked.

House turned to him, shook his head. "Every day," he said, and walked out.


	8. House

_House_

House knew he should sit

House knew he should sit. His leg wanted him to sit, his hip -- where he'd spotted a bruise blooming in dark shades of purple already -- wanted him to sit. His arm was tired, his shoulder was sore down to the bone, down to the marrow, and the ache had spread into an arc across his back.

Sitting made sense. But if he sat, he'd have to get up again, to force himself back into motion, when all he wanted was to drop into nothingness. Getting up would hurt more, so instead he moved.

He'd told his team to go home hours ago. Only Kutner had waited behind, asking if needed anything.

"I could give you a ride home, if you want," he'd said.

House had just stared at him, raised his eyebrows, and Kutner backed down, grabbed his bag off the chair.

"If you're sure," he'd said, then was gone.

After they left, House had walked the halls again, on the fourth floor for a while, then down on the second. A change of scenery.

He'd stopped outside the patient's room, watching through half-opened blinds as the man lay there. He was alone and the TV was on, but he wasn't watching it. Instead he was turned half onto his side, his head angled up as he stared at the IV bag hanging above him.

Thirteen said he hadn't asked very many questions when she and Kutner talked to him. She said she thought he understood was had happened, what was going to happen. She was wrong. He just didn't know which question to ask first. No one did.

"Dr. House?" He turned to see a woman looking at him, dyed blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a loose shirt and comfortable jeans. It was hard to guess how old she was. Probably no more than thirty, he guessed, but hospitals aged people.

"They said you were Dr. House," she said again, nodding toward the nurses. "I didn't meet you before. I'm Jennifer Osbourne. You treated my husband."

House nodded. He didn't want to have a conversation, but he was too tired to walk away. Instead he turned away from her, leaned on the counter of the nursing station, hoping she'd take the hint.

She didn't.

"The other doctors said that someone else would be talking to us about what we do next," she said. "I didn't know if I'd have the chance to thank you again."

"You're welcome," House said. Maybe now she'd leave.

She didn't.

He turned again, leaned onto his cane.

"It's going to be hard for him," she said.

House took a step away from the nurses' station. He should have left as soon as the wife had shown up.

"He doesn't like taking medicine, even vitamins," she said.

House looked at her one more time. "Then he'll have to learn how to change," he said, and walked away.

He'd found an empty lounge and turned on "Judge Judy," which was followed by "Judge Joe Brown." Once Dr. Phil came on, he flipped off the TV, then forced himself up, nearly stumbling when his hip and thigh both cramped up at the same time. It hurt like hell to get himself back up on both feet, so once he was up, he stayed up.

Now he stood near his desk, at the only spot where he could see the parking lot and a corner of the main entrance. He thought he spied Chase and Cameron leaving, but it could have been anyone really. It was just a guy in a gray wool hat, and a slim woman with a colorful scarf. It was probably them though. Their shifts would have ended at nearly the same time, with Chase off earlier, but he was enough of a fool to stick around for two hours just so that he could say that he waited for her.

He pressed his fingers against the door, felt the cold glass beneath his skin. Chase was an idiot for being in surgery. All he was doing was cutting and sewing. Any monkey could do that. Chase had a brain, and he wasn't using it. He should have left when he had the chance, gone somewhere where he could have done something great. Chase wasn't perfect, but he did have an ability to see when things didn't fit, and he had the charm that was needed to keep both administrators and patients happy. If he'd been at Mercy, he could have talked the dean into risking the procedure that the patient needed.

Foreman never understood that -- never saw that he lacked House's reputation to force a necessary treatment, and that he also lacked the tact that would have made it possible to get it done without force.

So now Foreman was back, where he belonged -- even if he still fighting it. At least now he knew that he had more to learn. That was a start, at least.

He saw Cuddy's reflection in the glass just before she pushed open the door. She came to a stop just in front of his desk.

"You come to yell at me some more?"

"Would it do any good?"

"What do you think?"

She shook her head. "I think I'm too tired to fight just now."

House turned, looked at her. Her blazer was unbuttoned, the fit a bit more shapeless than normal. Her hair wasn't quite as neat as she normally kept it, which meant that she'd been running her hands through it.

Sometimes he still expected to see her now as she was then, when they first met, her face unlined, no trace of the weariness that he saw now, and her hair longer, falling more than halfway down her back.

It had been snowing the first time he saw her, white flakes crowning her black hair. Now he sometimes caught a glimpse of gray in that hair, and it always took him by surprise.

"No more interior decorating," Cuddy said. "You'll have to live with what you've got." She looked over at the conference room, which was nearly back in its original layout.

He nodded. "Fine."

She turned to leave, then stopped with her hand on the door. "I hear your patient's been moved out of ICU," she said.

"We handed him off to rheumatology this afternoon," House said.

"I may not have liked how you picked them, but you've got a good team," she said.

"Thanks."

She pushed through the door and out into the hall.

Cuddy was right. It was a good team. They all had their issues, and still had a lot to learn. But they were learning.

He turned back toward the window, watched the snow. It was supposed to ease off tonight, be clear by noon. Maybe he'd double up on the drugs and sleep in.

House saw the light in Wilson's office dim, then go out. He'd be there in a minute. House took his coat from the back of his chair and pulled it on, checked the pockets for his hat and gloves. He hoisted his backpack onto his left shoulder and turned off his desk lamp.

He walked across the room, feeling each step, but trying to straighten up, trying not to let it show. Wilson would still know, but maybe no one else would.

He stopped at the door leading to the conference room. It wasn't quite right yet. The books were still out of place, and the shelves were six inches too far to the left. The table was too close to the far wall.

It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough.

He saw Wilson through the glass. He was checking his watch as he walked. The bitch was probably waiting for him somewhere, and he'd be there for her. For now. Because everything with her was still new. And because he always was there for them when it was new.

Wilson looked up, saw him and nodded as House stepped up to the door.

Give it a few months, and Wilson would suddenly find an interesting case, or a patient who needed him. A few more months, and he'd be lingering in the lounge at the end of the day, asking House if he wanted to go and grab and drink.

It wouldn't last with the bitch. It never did.

House snapped off the light and walked out the door and into the hallway where Wilson was still waiting -- like he always was. Like he always would be.

After all, some things would never change.


End file.
